Bob said:
The IP address on the WAN side of my router is static as far as I am
aware, in that it doesn't change,
Therein might be your problem. Did you pay your ISP for a static IP
address? If not, they're allocating a dynamic IP address to your
account (i.e., to your router). If your router is configured to NOT use
DHCP (from your ISP) to use whatever IP address your ISP assigns to you
then you won't be able to use your ISP. You HAVE to use the IP address
they give you. Any other IP address isn't authorized to use their
services.
Power cycling and resetting the router would return it to factory
defaults which is to use DHCP for assignment of the WAN-side IP address
of the router so it matches what your ISP assigns to you.
That you have an always-on (cable or DSL) broadband connection does NOT
mean your IP address (on the WAN-side of your router) always remains the
same - unless you paid for a static IP address (or the ISP gave you a
static IP address as part of their service with you). There in an
expiration to the binding of IP address to you. Once that expiration
passes, your assignment is *eligible* for reassignment. The binding
remains in force until you unbind which is typicall when you power cycle
or reset the router. When the binding is lost, a new one is established
but that may not be the same IP address that you had before. Also, I've
seen where ISPs will force an expiration of an IP address (possible with
DSL, don't know about cable) or they do maintenance that loses track of
the current binding. The result is that you still have the old IP
address they gave you (er, your router) but they no longer consider it
allocated to you on their end. I've ran into this too often where the
solution is to power cycle the router. The binding looks good but
suddenly I don't get any web traffic. Nothing looks bad on my end but
my ISP thinks I've did an unbind (or they did but my equipment doesn't
know). Everything working, stops working with no change on my part.
The first test I make is to see if I can get to the router (which you
say you have a problem). If that works, I use the IP address of the
cable modem to see its config. If that works it means my networking is
working on my end from computer through router to modem. Well, I can't
do anything about getting my ISP to do the handshaking for a new bind if
they don't initiate it themself. I can call them and have a tech send
some signals but it's much faster to just power cycle the router and
cable modem.
The IP address of my router is 192.168.0.1.
You sure? What brand and model is your router? The consumer-grade
routers that I've used all came with a default of 192.168.1.1.
If you go into the TCP/IP settings for your computer's LAN connection,
what IP address is listed for the gateway host? The gateway is your
router (unless you have a more layered network setup with subnets) and
that's how you get to the Internet. If the gateway specified on your
host doesn't match your router then your computer can't find the gateway
to the Internet.
It was only my main PC which could not connect to the router as 2
laptops and a secondary PC could.
Okay. So it's not a router-modem problem.
Then besides checking if the web-facing app is using a proxy, I'd check
the TCP/IP configuration to make sure the gateway specified in the
computer matches the LAN-side IP address for the router.
Did you ever try rebooting into Windows' Safe Mode (with networking) to
test under that environment?
If you mean is there a different IP address, ie the one from France;
there is nothing in the hosts file to reflect that
Is there anything in there other than the localhost (127.0.0.1)
definition? You can rename the 'hosts' file, say, to 'old-hosts' to
make sure you aren't getting redirected. That you end up at a bogus
Google site indicates a possibility of a redirect using the 'hosts'
file. It also indicates you're infected.
