Firefox not finding websites on first attempt

tigersnake · Post by **tigersnake** » October 25th, 2004, 1:37 pm

hello together, I had the same problems using firefox with xp sp2 and ZoneAlarm (51_033)... When I read the statement about backstep from ZA51_033 to ZA51_011 I had an idea: The only solution on my system was, to define a proxy server in ZoneAlarm, now everything works fine, and every internet-adress is opened by the first attempt, maybe it works somewhere else too... :-)

Frank Lion · Post by **Frank Lion** » October 25th, 2004, 2:40 pm

Glad to help, tigersnake.

dsearles · Post by **dsearles** » October 25th, 2004, 7:46 pm

Frank, Thanks. Switching back to the previous version of Zone Alarm solved the problem. Obviously the most recent version of Zone Alarm conflicts with Firefox. Given the popularity of Zone Alarm, not a good situation for trying to bring Firefox to the masses.

Tigersnake, would you mind posting a little more detail on the steps you took to fix the problem by defining a proxy server in the most recent version of Zone Alarm. I'd like to give it a try but I'm not sure how to define a new proxy server. Thanks

If anyone else knows how to do this in Zone Alarm, please feel free to post in case Tigersnake doesn't check back.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » October 25th, 2004, 8:31 pm

Toggling the network.dns.disableIPv6 fixed the problem of reaching web sites for me. I have a 500mhz Windows 98 PC. I've been fighting almost the identical problem with Internet Explorer 6.0. This issue, along with all the spyware I recently cleaned from my system, is what drove me to switch web browsers. Thanks Mozilla! And thank you SpeedyGonsales for the very accurate and very crisp soluton.

tigersnake · Post by **tigersnake** » October 26th, 2004, 12:32 am

sorry, been at sports yesterday evening...
Here my modifications in ZA in detail:
- open main ZA-control-center
- choose <Overview> - <Preferences> - <General>
- there is a button <Options>
- in the new tab in sub-area <Proxy Configuration> check <Enable Proxy Server>
- and fill in your proxy server. I put in the proxy of my provider (german telekom)
<http-proxy.t-online.de> port <80>
from there on everything has worked fine...
I assume there is a kind of timing problem accessing the dns when establishing the automatic internet connect, because I hadn't got the problems when connecting first and started firefox after that... but however, the probs are gone... looking forward your attempts :-)

Guest · Post by **Guest** » October 26th, 2004, 11:13 am

Thanks Tigersnake. I also went on the ZoneAlarm Forum and found comments about Zone Alarm ZA 5.1.033 being a "trouble version" and either recommending people go backwards in versions (removing 5.1.033) or download the new beta version 5.5.035. Thanks again for the response.

jillelaine · Post by **jillelaine** » October 27th, 2004, 12:29 pm

This (network.dns.disableIPv6, true) fixed my constant "Operation timed out while contacting <website>" too. I was having this problem both at work and at home, with and without various firewall(s), and with completely different configs and OS.

Seems like this is a common problem (look at all the messages in the forums about "time out" issues) that it should be a STICKY. Just my opinion! Anyway, THANK YOU so much SpeedyGonsales for the fix! :-)

Guest · Post by **Guest** » October 31st, 2004, 6:02 pm

Try adding a public DNS entry in your router or in your network properties.

SpeedyGonsales · Post by **SpeedyGonsales** » November 2nd, 2004, 4:05 am

I am glad that "my" solution helped (I used google, ping, traceroute and nslookup to solve the issue), but even now sometimes I have problems, and now I checked, it occurs both in IE and FF.
Problem is that some providers use crappy caching-only DNS (crappy isn't for caching-only, but for implementation, although serious provider shoudn't use caching-only DNS).

As I am pleased with my current provider in all ways except DNS, there is simple solution as written above: "Use public DNS server".
How? Find out which public DNS exists in your area, and then go to Control Panel/Networking/TCP/IP Properties/DNS configuration,
and put there x.y.z.q numbers of DNS you have found. If problems become more frequent, then you know that somebody have more
problems than you, and you should try another DNS, or revert to your provider DNS.

And finaly, combining both solutions (public DNS and disableIPv6) should solve all DNS issues for good (if you find good DNS server :-)

)

HTH

--
God speed

Guest · Post by **Guest** » November 3rd, 2004, 12:31 pm

wheres location bar

Guest · Post by **Guest** » November 3rd, 2004, 12:56 pm

i have the same problem, but the solution doesn't work.

I have ZoneAlarm too.

hybucket · Post by **hybucket** » November 3rd, 2004, 6:14 pm

I was having his problem occasionally when I read Speedy Gonzales post of 10/12 - so I went to about:config and changed the setting as suggeted...it made it worse! So I went back to the default....but the question remains...is there a definite solution to this and is it being worked on? ANyone know? Like anohter posting, once I go to the site in IE, it works for FF. Strange.
I'm on XP with Verizon DSL

Guest · Post by **Guest** » November 5th, 2004, 6:46 pm

I just tried what Jadugar posted on page 2. It seems to have worked...ff took awhile to load though. It's the comment about adding a user.txt with a ton of some language.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » November 5th, 2004, 6:51 pm

just tried to see if there was a bug listed in the bug report site, and of course, the fix I just listed as working above didn't work...sorry. This is something that really really does need fixed in FF.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » November 5th, 2004, 7:00 pm

I Quit! Until FF fixes it it's back to IE for me. I am not experienced enough to figure this out! IE didn't do this crap every freakin page I load!