cannot access one site

I have developed a weird problem a few days ago: I cannot connect to one particular site--www.nero.com. Actually, I cannot connect to any nero sites. There are, however, no problems whatsoever connecting to any other site that I know off. I cannot connect using either IE 7 or FireFox. In IE7, I'm taken to my default search engine--yahoo--as soon as I type www.nero.com--with the listings for Nero. Clicking on the link to the home page gives me the "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" error message.
Now I know that the nero site isn't down. I asked someone who lives close by--and has the same ISP--to connect to the site, and he had no problems. Furthermore, if I connect through a proxy server, I can connect to it. I have a cable connection, but just to make sure, I created a trial dial-up account with another ISP. When I connect using that dial-up account, I can connect to nero. Of course, I contacted my cable ISP, and they told me it isn't a problem on their end.
I have an internet connection tweaking program called TweakMaster, and it has a DNS Accelerator feature. When I turn the feature on, and add nero.com to the Hosts List, it does solve the problem. However, without that feature turned on, cannot connect to the site, period. Unistalling anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall software doesn't help.
If anyone has an idea of what this problem is, and how to fix it, I would very much appreciate your help.
I use Windows XP Pro SP2, with IE7.

 

Hi Arie!

First of all, thank you very much for the prompt response.

I did check my host file, and there are no entries for nero.

The only line in this file that doesn't start with a '#' is:
127.0.0.1 localhost

 

Puzzle this out in a few days.

There are serious DNS server problems at the moment for many ISPs. Your DNS accelerator is doing nothing more than caching an entry, rather than making fresh calls to your ISPs DNS servers.

If it was an error in setttings, or some other reason, your dial-up success essentially rules this out.

To check your ISP for potential DNS server issues, see the discussion forum for your ISP at http://www.broadbandreports.com

 

Nero Blocked Site

Two pop up blockers running ( the windows sp2 one and something like a google toolbar or sonme unknown toolbar /spyware running as well.)
Check your view> toolbar menu as well as your list of programs in your add /remove programs panel in your control panel.
Ensure that your DNS is set to automatic.
It is not out of the realm that it is a piece of spyware.
Run adaware and spybot ( with updates).
Could there be either some setting in your security settings in your browser - try turning it down for a test. Also check to see that it is not in your list of blocked sites in your i.e. controls.

 

All of these good suggestions were ruled out when there were no issues using a different ISP to connect.

 

First of all, I thank each and everyone for your suggestions. I appreciate it very much.
Two days ago, it just started working again. I would ordinarily assume that it was a problem with my ISP--even though their tech support kept denying it. On the other hand, it may not have been. I have no idea.
I have an older pentium 4 machine, and the original OS that came with it was Windows 2000 Pro. When I used my restoration CD, and restored the software that came preinstalled with the pc, I had no trouble. However, the Windows XP upgrades did not--I was just not able to connect to that one site. I keep a few norton ghosts images as a backup, so I tried to restore my earlier configurations--trying to go back about two weeks at a time--up to the earliest configuration I have stored--about two months ago. But no matter which image I restored, I was just not able to connect to nero.com--or any nero sites--when connected through my regular cable ISP.
I did find a utility called Winsockxpfix, a 'Winsock and TCP Repair Utility'. It did fix this particular problem. However, whatever this utility does to the registry, it created a number of different problems on my system, including problems with my soundblaster software.
In any case, I gave up and decided I can live with the problem, particularly since using the TweakMaster DNS accelerator utility allows me to connect to nero. So I once again restored a recent norton ghost image of my system, and this time there were no connection problems--even though previous restorations of that same image didn't solve the problem.
Perhaps to a person with more technical knowledge it isn't as mysterious, but to me the problem is very weird. I have never encountered anything like that before. I am just grateful that it is working again--without me tweaking any settings.
Once again, I thank all of you for your suggestions. If you have any thoughts of this problem may have been, I'd be curious to read it, just in case it comes up again.

Sincerely,

Alexander