Problems with web browsing...

Hi guys,

This is my first post, so firstly hello everyone! I have been having a technical issue with my web browsing for just under a week now, and have tried some basic fixes but nothing has worked so far.

The problem I have is this: certain websites refuse to load at all on my MacBook. I use Chrome exclusively, but have tested in Safari and Firefox (all browsers are fully updated). In addition, I sometimes find my connection to be very slow, but this only happens occasionally.

I don't have another computer to test on, however I can navigate to any of the webpages that won't load on the MacBook, on my iPhone.

Quick searches on the net have led me to to scanning my MacBook for anything malicious, like malware, and I've not come across anything so far. I've scanned the whole computer with with Sophos and MacScan with no hits. I thought it might have been malware of some kind, but I can't find anything. The only other thing that crossed my mind was that some of the ports might have been altered...but I don't know how, seeing as I'm clueless about ports myself...

I'm running on mac os x 10.5.8. Not sure what else people might need to know, but ask away if i've missed anything out? Examples of websites that don't work have been facebook (working now but has refused to load in the past) amazon.co.uk, tfl.gov.uk (transport website for london) - all these sites have at one point not opened for a long duration, but now do. However, twitter.com refuses to load at all, and has done so for a good 4-5 days now. I know the website works and hasn't had any outages, at least not for a long duration, because I've been able to access it at work and on my iPhone...

Thanks for any light you guys might be able to shed on this problem. And if you need any more info/background that i might be able to supply, please do ask!

Do you have PeerGuardian installed?

Or some anti-virus app?

(Think this will become my first question for this issue from now on after the past few days.)

Yup, I have peer guardian running. Do you think this is the source of the problem? Growl's running too.

Other than that, I have Sophos but it's not on constantly, as far as I'm aware.

Judging from your reply, has there been similar cases lately?

Thanks for the reply.

We've had 3 other cases (that I've seen) of PeerGuardian being the culprit of this exact issue in the last 2 days. Even when it supposedly is not running. Uninstalling it solved the issue in all 3 cases. We've had 2 others with the same issue, that have yet to respond back.



(Looks like I can shorten my de facto standard response to:

"Uninstall PeerGuardian")

Make that 4 solved cases. Thank you very much.

At least I've helped you shorten your future responses, hehe.

Thanks again!

Thanks - appreciate the feedback. ;D

Hi,

I've had the exact same problem for a couple of days now but it's really becoming unbearable today. I have problems loading certain websites on my browsers, all of the browsers, but safari is considerably worse than firefox and chrome has been having similar problems but with far less sites. Sites are either not loading at all or only the top banner and a couple of ads but no text.The little blue loading bar at the bottom of FF either never becomes all the way full or it takes an eternity. All the sites I have problems with load fine on my 4G iPod touch on the same wireless network. I run OS X 10.5.8. I've tried to delete my cache, reset safari and I ran Onyx. I DO NOT have or ever have had PeerGuardian on my computer. Download speed is not affected. Please help.

Oh and i'm new to the site and don't have much computer knowledge so please keep that in mind.