What to Do When You Cannot Open a Particular Website

Your computer is connected to the Internet but you are unable to open a particular website though all the other sites are loading without issues.

For instance, you can open yahoo.com and bing.com but it takes forever to load www.google.com even though the site is up for everyone else in the world.

Error Loading Website - Flowchart

How to Troubleshoot your Internet Connection

Step 0: Like with everything else, switch off the modem, restart the computer, and turn on the modem again. Also clear the Internet cookies and browser cache. Problem gone? No, proceed to the next step.

Step 1: Temporarily disable your computer’s firewall and close any anti-virus software that may be running in the background. If you are now able to access the websites that were previously not loading, your security program is causing the problem. As as workaround, you can add that site to the “trusted” zone in Internet Explorer and see if it works.

Step 2: Open your hosts file and see if there are any entries for sites that are currently unreachable from your computer. The hosts file is located in the following folder:

c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Step 3: Try a remote screen capture.  This will help ensure that the site you are trying to access is not down at the source.

Step 4: Clear your DNS cache and run the ping and traceroute commands against the problematic site to make sure that it is not an ISP specific issue.

ipconfig /flushdns tracert www.error-website.com ping www.error-website.com

If the DNS server is an issue, you can easily switch to Google DNS or OpenDNS without having to call the ISP’s support. However, if the ping and traceroute connections are successful but the sites remain unreachable, proceed to the next step.

Step 5. Reset the modem to factory defaults and re-configure it with the same username and password that was provided by the ISP. You can reset the modem by pressing a pin inside the hole located at the back of the modem for about 10 seconds. Or you can call your ISP support and let them guide you through the steps over phone.

The last step is very likely to fix your internet connectivity problem.

Amit Agarwal

Amit Agarwal

Google Developer Expert, Google Cloud Champion

Amit Agarwal is a Google Developer Expert in Google Workspace and Google Apps Script. He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science (I.I.T.) and is the first professional blogger in India.

Amit has developed several popular Google add-ons including Mail Merge for Gmail and Document Studio. Read more on Lifehacker and YourStory

0

Awards & Titles

Digital Inspiration has won several awards since it's launch in 2004.

Google Developer Expert

Google Developer Expert

Google awarded us the Google Developer Expert award recogizing our work in Google Workspace.

ProductHunt Golden Kitty

ProductHunt Golden Kitty

Our Gmail tool won the Lifehack of the Year award at ProductHunt Golden Kitty Awards in 2017.

Microsoft MVP Alumni

Microsoft MVP Alumni

Microsoft awarded us the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) title for 5 years in a row.

Google Cloud Champion

Google Cloud Champion

Google awarded us the Champion Innovator title recognizing our technical skill and expertise.

Email Newsletter

Sign up for our email newsletter to stay up to date.

We will never send any spam emails. Promise.