Win98 PWS no longer working

This is very irritating. I'm a web developer who uses PWS on my Win98 machine for testing ASP scripts locally. Obviously I'm not a systems guru. Everything has been working fine for years.

Then suddenly yesterday it stops working. Grrr.

The facts:

1. My hosts file vanished. Odd.
2. I created a new one, to wit - 127.0.0.1 localhost
3. http://localhost/test.html still gives me a 500 error (page cannot be displayed) as does http://127.0.0.1/test.html
4. The PWS home directory is still correctly mapped to inetpub/wwwroot/ where is always has been.
5. My DNS is on. (I tried shutting it off...nothing changed).
6. When I ping localhost or 127.0.0.1, all packets are received.
7. I thought perhaps that PWS might be crapping out on me, so I installed Apache 1.3 Win32, and then Apache 2.0 Win32. Both versions behaved the same as PWS. (I've installed Apache on linux successfully, so I'm reasonably confident I edited the config file correctly).

So...if both servers are giving me the same troubles, I'm guessing that somehow the computer is not looping back...but the pings say it is!?

One random thought...a new virus?

Frustratingly puzzled, but looking forward to others' thoughts and suggestions!

Thanks,
Tony

 

If Apache is giving the same problems as Personal Web Server, the problem is most likely in your networking. Something just went bad.

First thing I'd do is check for a virus using one of the online scan sites like Housecall since your installed AV might have missed something.

Next thing would be to install, update, and then run first Ad-aware and then Spybot.

You may already be doing this but make sure you have dumped your temp files, temporary internet files, and cookies recently. Scandisk and defrag are also in order.

Then I'd tweak the hosts file a little by making the line read
127.0.0.1 localhost Localhost LOCALHOST.
That way you'll be sure to get there no matter what name variation you are looking for. And while you may already know this, the file must be named hosts with no extensions and on 9X it has to be located in the Windows folder/directory.

If none of this helps at all, I'd suggest removing networking from your PC entirely and installing it from the beginning.
- boot to safe mode and use device manager to remove the network card
- shut down and remove the network card
- boot up normally then shut down again
- reinstall the network card and boot up to let 98 install it.
- set up your networking again. I don't remember 98 stuff that well but you need to be sure you are using the files from DUN1.4 so you will have the latest versions of all the TCP/IP related files.

You may need to reinstall PWS again. Not really sure. You will at least need to make sure you have the correct domain information for running PWS and the reinstall is probably the easiest way to do that.

 

Newt - thanks for all the ideas. I too thought was that it was a bad network initially...but pinging 127.0.0.1 worked perfectly. It was just the browser loopback that failing.

(Of course you probably realize where I'm going with this already )

Anyway, I did try reinstalling my network card before my post (I forgot to mention that). I tried your suggestion of covering all the varieties of localhost in the host file (although I thought Windows was case insensitive). Checked viruses.

All nothing.

Then, while I was showering this morning (which is where most of my semi-intelligent thought comes from - probably since there are no kids screaming in the next room) I thought of something. It was the browser loopback that was failing.

Sure enough, when I tried Netscape 4.71 and Mozilla they both worked perfectly. Obviously MSIE6 is the source of all my sleepless nights. Even though I shouldn't, I always use MSIE as my browser of choice to test my work. (I say "shouldn't" because MSIE is soooo much more forgiving of sloppy coding or errors than any other browser. In my defense I always check my final product in the other browsers before uploading).

Anyway, I'm off to doublecheck my setting, and then perhaps reinstall MSIE. However, I'm confident that I've isolated the problem and should have my life back to its happy place shortly.

Still, thanks again Newt for thinking around corners. Your help was invaluable in helping eliminate some possiblities, and confirming that I managed to do a few things correctly. As I mentioned earlier, I'm a coder; not a system guru.

Tony

 

Please give details if/when you figure out the cause. I wouldn't have thought it possible for the browser to refuse to hit a URL it could find. Love to find out what is causing the problem.

Also love to know if a repair or reinstall of IE6 takes care of the issue.

 

My head hurts. I still cannot use a browser loopback with MSIE.

I tried merely resetting all my internet setting in MSIE back to default. Nothing. I (re)added the latest SP for MSIE6. Nothing. I tried "repairing" MSIE6 through an option I accidently found in the uninstall process. Nothing. I tried rolling back my browser and Outlook Express to version 5. Nothing. I uninstalled the browser, then reinstalled to 5. Nothing. (Except for losing my address book in OE...). I reinstalled 6. Nothing. (OE 6 found my address book again fortunately).

Throughout it all, Netscape was able to use "localhost" to successfully loopback with both PWS and Apache. Both webservers seem to work perfectly - ASP, PHP, perl, SSI, python all function just fine.

ONLY MSIE 5 & 6 cannot accept "localhost" or 127.0.0.1. I've never had any trouble connecting to any other url or ip.

At this point I'm wondering

a) How complete is the uninstall option for IE? Given the legal history of Windows and IE, I was a bit surprised that it was even a valid option. I did encounter trouble with OE during my ordeal, so perhaps IE is not being completely wiped out?

b) If so, perhaps there is a corrupt Windows DLL that governs loopbacks that only MSIE 5+ uses and that Netscape does not. It is not being uninstalled and therefore is not being reinstalled? Or perhaps it is not a part of MSIE per se, but rather Windows and so would not be uninstalled anyway.

I'm at a brick wall now. Short of doing a clean install, or upgrading to 2000, I just can't figure this out.

*sigh*
Tony

 

I still think a complete removal of networking - including the NIC itself - and a reload would be worth a try.