Page cannot be found-excessive times

I seem to get an inordinate amount of "Page Not Found" messages since starting to use OE 6 with my new XP Pro pc. Really obvious sites such as TheGolfChannel.com or the NOAA site for my region return these messages. I cannot believe they are down. Fiddling with the ZA settings doesn't change anything. Any guidance on this issue would be appreciated.

 

Most likely (and easiest to check) is that something snuck onto your PC and made some entries in your hosts file that pointed nowhere.

Otherwise, what operating system and how do you connect to the internet?

 

XP Professional SP1 with a 56k modem to a good ISP. How can I check the hosts file? I have ZA and run SpyBot on a regular basis.

 

It is a text file so notepad will open it for you to have a look.

c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts (no extension)

This file, if present, is read first to determine the IP address of a site and if a match is found, no further checking will ever be done so a URL matched to the wrong IP address in hosts is not going to be available to you by name until the entry is corrected or removed.

If you find any suspicious looking entries, just place a copy of the entire hosts file in a reply here.

 

Having opened hosts file...

I just see 127.0.0.1 Local Host. Can I delete it without causing problems?

 

"Page not found" or "Page cannot be displayed "? The former often is a sign of a link that is no longer working. The latter could have many reasons. Newt suggests one. Here are others
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q241344
Does that HOSTS file you have accessed have a file extension .sam after it? That is not the right HOSTS file. You want the one with no file extension.
In the meantime, to hopefully put you in a good mood
http://www.mamselle.ca/error.html