It's really weird but when I open a new tab, the only web site I can access is Sciforums! Even Google doesn't work. I have also tried opening new instances of Explorer and all i get is the familiar "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage". What's wrong?

p.s. I'm running a McAfee virus scan at the moment

It's really weird but when I open a new tab, the only web site I can access is Sciforums! Even Google doesn't work. I have also tried opening new instances of Explorer and all i get is the familiar "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage". What's wrong?

p.s. I'm running a McAfee virus scan at the moment

...you answered your own question.

What, that it was a virus?

Anyway, even Sciforums could not be accessed when i closed explorer but then I went to the explorer help and I pinged my DNS address from the command prompt and things seem to be OK again. Very strange.

after a while...life would be inaccessible...at this rate

When a page doesn't display, but you can ping external IP's (outside of your LAN), then it usually means a DNS error. Perhaps your First or Secondary DNS server isn't responding or perhaps your computers settings are wrong and aren't picking up your ISP DNS servers.

The DNS pretty much deals with Domain Name Resolution, it converts the Canonical domain name typed into the Address bar to it's IP to allow a connection with the server. The server in question actually is told by what canonical name you accessed so that multiple websites can reside on the same servers IP address.

Some programs can adjust the HOSTS file, which does act as the clients first resource for resolving a domain name. Simply when you enter a URL and press return, your computer will check the HOSTS file for an entry for that domain name, then it will try using the DNS server provided by the settings you've applied, if it can't resolve the website by either of these methods it will then return a "failed to connect".

Thanks Stryder

yeah...Stryder uses acronyms on the go.