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About a month ago, Facebook stopped loading on any browser on my Windows 7 PC. I figured it was a virus, and yesterday, I wiped my computer clean and formatted everything because the entire thing has been sluggish lately.

I am typing this on my freshly wiped Windows 7 Ultimate x64 computer, and the only program that I have even installed yet (beside the drivers) is Google Chrome. I can't load Facebook even on this wiped-clean computer. It loads on my freshly wiped laptop, my iPad, my iPhone, and every other computer on my network. It just won't load for this one physical machine. I even tried rearranging Ethernet cables on my router, changing the Ethernet cable going to this computer, and resetting the network.

Absolutely nothing fixes this. I have literally no idea what could be causing this.

Keep in mind that this is happening to one computer with a brand new install of Windows and every other website works on this computer. Every other device on the network can also connect to Facebook.

HackToHell
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Nick Anderegg
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    What do you mean "doesn't load"? What happens when you try to go to facebook? Describe **exactly** what happens. Do you get an error message? If so, what error? Does it just display a blank page? If you go to View Source on the resulting page / non-page, what does it say? – allquixotic Aug 07 '12 at 15:41
  • Can you define 'not loading'? Does it leave you a blank page? Does it give you an error? Also, what version of Chrome are you using? Just the download from google's website, or have you switched it to the beta or dev channels? – Darth Android Aug 07 '12 at 15:41
  • I type in "facebook.com" into the address bar and then Chrome tells me "This webpage is not available" because it took too long to respond. ***Occasionally,*** (before I wiped my computer and was still logged in) it would let me go to the homepage, but it wouldn't even load the News Feed. – Nick Anderegg Aug 07 '12 at 15:43
  • Can you confirm sites other than Facebook load correctly? – LawrenceC Aug 07 '12 at 15:46
  • Every other site loads correctly. I was evening doing a full-system backup before I wiped my computer, which meant sending a ton of data to the cloud. – Nick Anderegg Aug 07 '12 at 15:55
  • Do you have any other computers/wifi devices to test facebook.com from your network? – Rich Homolka Aug 07 '12 at 15:56
  • Yes, as I said in my question, my other laptop, my iPod, my iPad, my Android phone, other people's computers, even my Xbox can connect to Facebook. – Nick Anderegg Aug 07 '12 at 15:57
  • I'm banging my head on my keyboard because I've tried everything I can think of, and this problem *makes absolutely no sense.* In theory, it's not possible. In practice, it's happening. – Nick Anderegg Aug 07 '12 at 16:05

3 Answers3

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Things to try:

  • Try running ping facebook.com from your broken computer and from a computer that accesses it successfully. Do you get the same IP address when it looks up the hostname on both computers? Can the broken computer resolve an IP at all?

  • Try other websites with dynamic content

  • Make sure the router doesn't have any type of content filtering on it that may be blocking you out...

  • Do you trust the users of all the other computers on your network? Someone may be doing something nasty.

  • Make sure your drivers are up to date. Drivers shipped on the CD that comes with the hardware are often minimally working, just enough to convince the customer that the hardware isn't dead, but they often are chock full of bugs. The bugs get fixed in subsequent driver releases which are pushed on the manufacturer's website.

The latter bullet happened to be the issue with the original poster, so I bolded it. You can see the diagnosis chat in the comments.

Googlers: welcome to driver heck ;-) Go to the manufacturer website (in the OP's case, Asus) and update your drivers!!! Some keywords:

Realtek 8111E slow Asus M5A97 ethernet slow Driver CD network slow

allquixotic
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  • Every other website loads fine including Twitter, SE, Quora, and Gmail which all load content dynamically. There's no content filtering on my router. I double checked even though I'm the administrator on this network, and there is not type of filtering. And nobody is doing anything. This happens even when all other devices are off. The desktop and laptop are pinging different IP addresses however; with the laptop about 80ms faster, but they could just be connecting to different Facebook servers. – Nick Anderegg Aug 07 '12 at 16:02
  • Are both your laptop and the broken box hitting the same DNS server? Check your network settings and make sure they are hitting the same DNS server. Also try reverse DNS lookup of the IP address returned as "facebook.com" by the broken box. If the reverse DNS doesn't indicate that it's facebook, you may have lingering malware trying to redirect you to a malicious site. http://www.mxtoolbox.com/reverselookup.aspx – allquixotic Aug 07 '12 at 16:05
  • Here's what the broken box is giving me: http://www.mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=ptr%3a69.171.224.37 and here's what my functioning laptop is giving me: http://www.mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=ptr%3a66.220.158.11 Different nameservers, but otherwise, no issues. – Nick Anderegg Aug 07 '12 at 16:07
  • Try directly accessing the 66.220.158.11 that the functioning laptop gives you, from the broken box. Does that work? – allquixotic Aug 07 '12 at 16:10
  • I just refreshed Facebook, the homepage loaded almost instantly, I tried logging in, and it was very, very quick to tell me the page took to long to load. Why is my browser instantly telling me a page is taking too long!? That doesn't even make sense. – Nick Anderegg Aug 07 '12 at 16:10
  • Broken box IP works on the laptop just fine, but the laptop IP on the broken box actually let me load and log in to Facebook. I'll do stuff and see if it holds up. – Nick Anderegg Aug 07 '12 at 16:13
  • The Laptop IP on the broken box *seems* to be working, but it's still very slow. – Nick Anderegg Aug 07 '12 at 16:14
  • that "taking too long to load" is based on the TCP timeout, which means that the TCP stack on one of the nodes (your broken box, the router, the ISP's server, whatever) has a timeout set to a value that is causing it to time out after that very short time. But then you should be able to reproduce it on other slow sites... try MSN, they're slow ;-) Or try a page in Russia or Korea if you live in the US, or vice versa. – allquixotic Aug 07 '12 at 16:14
  • Let's go to chat, we'll figure out the problem there and I'll edit my answer. – allquixotic Aug 07 '12 at 16:15
  • let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/4412/discussion-between-allquixotic-and-nick-anderegg) – allquixotic Aug 07 '12 at 16:16
  • I wish there was a way to upvote a question more than once. Or to just give you like 20 extra rep for the answer haha. I had already thought of literally everything we discussed.... except updating the drivers from the website. – Nick Anderegg Aug 07 '12 at 16:56
  • You can award the answer a bounty... or the community in general can. But chances are I'll get some more rep from passersby who see the answer and the effort that went into diagnosing the problem. So don't worry about it. – allquixotic Aug 07 '12 at 16:58
  • Probably. Either way, this was a great help because apparently, my brain decided to quit. I can usually look at a computer and solve a problem in under 2 minutes... this took me 2 months... – Nick Anderegg Aug 07 '12 at 17:00
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I was having the same problem but with my twitter account. It turns out that AVG was set to block every cookie from Twitter so it won't let me follow/rt, anything. As soon as I changed that set to enable cookies it magically worked again :P

girly
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To me it sounds more like either your security software or a malware is preventing you from accessing Facebook.

  1. Try making sure that Facebook is on your allowed/safe list on your AV software/firewall (somebody/something could have placed it on the blocked list).

  2. Scan your PC for malware using your AV with latest definitions.

Bobster
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    Wow, I wish StackExchange had a "Did not read the question" badge. I'd totally give it to you. The problem was occurring on a blank install of Windows with nothing installed whatsoever, and the problem was already solved by the answer above. – Nick Anderegg Aug 16 '12 at 18:40
  • Sorry for misreading, Nick. – Bobster Oct 08 '12 at 15:04