Each time I am denied I get a full page of the sort of thing you see above. This is the first one that shows up at the top of the page. Almost a windfall for this guy. Someone types in SOG and they see him at the top of the page.

1. At one time, Peggy B. went days and days thinking the site was down. It turned out she simply needed to clear her cache. So, if you haven't done that, please do so. Also, run AOL's autofix.

2. If this does not help, as I've said many times before, this is not a problem with St. Louis Internet and there is only so much I can do, especially since I am not an AOL client. I would suggest that you write again to the AOL Legal Deparment at [email protected].

Cynthia

Mike,

While this probably isn't the problem, if you haven't tried it it couldn't hurt. Can you access the forum from your browser by typing in the IP, http://65.127.237.190? If that doesn't work, and you are using Windows, try typing in the following from a DOS prompt; PING forum.portraitartist.com, or PING 65.127.237.190. If pinging doesn't come back with a several replies in milliseconds for the forum command, but does for the IP number command, then that most likely means your internet provider lost the domain name from their list, and needs to add it again.

Holly

Thanks, Holly. Yes, the contention of my isp and myself is that there is either something amiss with AOL's name servers and/or one of the isp's along the route traveled. And, one of the reasons it would come up one time and not another is that they have many name servers and rotate between them.

Typing this: http://65.127.237.190

Brings back the followning:

I don't know how to get to the DOS command.

Try this, go to http://www.dnsstuff.com/

First, under "DNS Lookup" type in "forum.portraitartist.com", or any site you can't access. It will give you the IP number for it.

Then, under "Ping" enter that IP number. Hopefully it will return with some times that it took a sample packet of data to reach that destination.

Then, under "Tracert" enter that IP number. If Pinging worked, this will return with the route that packet of data took to get to its destination. If the packet of data doesn't make it, the last entry in the table is likely where the data got hosed.

Then enter that last IP address in the "IPWHOISLookup", and it will give you some info on who owns the server where the data got lost.

Hope that leads you somewhere!

And I thought AOL was supposed to be so easy. From the problems so many people have with it, it's a wonder they have any customers left at all!

There used to be a little banner, very professionally done, that some web designers used to put on their sites. It said "AOL sucks." :)

Mike,

I think you have XP. Go to Start | Programs | Accessories | C Prompt. That gets you into DOS if you ever need to.

Holly,

I did a tracert thru your method and it said Reached Destination, but it also said "missing reverse DNS entry" at a certain point. Do you know what that means?

Of course, someone with AOL needs to do it from AOL.

I got the same thing Cynthia.

I did a check of "reverse DNS" through Holly's link and it came back with the following: