It's rarely true that you must use the DNS servers provided by your ISP; I 
use the ones at work because they seem to be slightly better maintained than 
most.

  But in most cases, your machine is configured to obtain DNS server 
addresses from DHCP at the same time as you receive an address to use, so 
both of these will have been specified by the ISP.

  I did work, about a year ago, on a machine that wasn't picking up the DNS 
settings from DHCP -- it had them statically configured to some other 
strange addresses.  We changed it to pick them up from DHCP, and it did ... 
for about an hour, then reset them to the same static values.  It turned out 
to be a spyware infestation that was doing it.
  We never knew how long the machine had been infected.  We got called 
because, like this poster's friend, the user could not reach any sites.  It 
turned out that the Russian ISP had finally responded to a complaint and 
taken down the spyware servers that the spyware on their machine was sending 
their DNS queries to.

David Gillett


On 23 Mar 2007 at 16:44, Peter wrote:

> I have found that a common cause of such failure is due to an incorrect DNS
> server setting. Open a command prompt window and type "ipconfig /all"
> without the quotes. This will display some information on your network
> configuration. In particular, you need to look at the value for the DNS
> server. Check the IP value for the DNS against what the ISP says it should
> be. If this is indeed wrong, then you will need to correct this in the wide
> area network configuration settings. I forget where it is in Win98, but we
> can look into that if you need help once you confirm this as being the
> problem.
> 
> Peter
> ----------------------------------
> [log in to unmask]
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> I have a friend with a computer problem that I am going to visit this
> afternoon and try to help. She is on a dialup connection. She dials to her
> ISP and connects properly, then she cannot connect to any web page. 
> Every time she puts any URL into IE, it comes back with words to the effect
> that it is unable to locate the server. She has spent an hour or more on the
> phone with the tech at her ISP who finally told her that she would have to
> reinstall her operating system  (Win98) and that she could get a really good
> deal on a new Dell computer right now.  Her computer is an HP and has
> performed perfectly for years.
> 
> Loy
> 
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