One user having problems navigating my website

Forums › IT Pro and developers › One user having problems navigating my website

PSLog

273 posts

Ultimate Geek

#56569 17-Jan-2010 17:53

I have a website www.nzmotorhome.co.nz.
One user (only) gets a 404 error when trying to use the righthand sidebar menu.
Their favourites link takes them directly to the Forum page but if they try to navigate to any of the other pages they get "Host Gator 404 Page not found".
They are using Windows 7 and both IE and Fx (same problem with both.
If they use an alternative computer (XP Pro and Fx) then it works fine.

Any suggestions about what sort of thing could be causing this??

TIA

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
76363 posts

Uber Geek

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#290734 17-Jan-2010 17:57

I'd suggest you start checking what's the DNS he's using on this specific PC - seeing other PCs work fine. Then make sure that DNS resolves your site correctly.

Also check that both www and non-www are defined in your DNS records. And on your webserver virtual hosts header.

Please support Geekzone by subscribing, or using one of our referral links: Dosh referral: 00001283 | Sharesies | Goodsync | Mighty Ape | Backblaze

freitasm on Keybase | My technology disclosure

MightyApe

You will find anything you want at MightyApe (affiliate link).

buzzy

217 posts

Master Geek

#291083 19-Jan-2010 09:01

If the user can get to the Forum page then DNS shouldn't be an issue; it looks like all the pages are hosted under the same domain.

Have a look at the following for some more into on the "HostGator" 404 errors - it looks like someone (most likely the people hosting your website or his ISP) are using HostGator to try and make money out of problem links: http://hostingfu.com/article/hostgator-monetize-with-default-404-page

PSLog

273 posts

Ultimate Geek

#291097 19-Jan-2010 09:25

That may be so, Buzzy, but I don't think that they are going as far as to create bogus 404 errors, so there is still a real problem (despite them trying to make money out of it).

If the user types in the URL's of each of the pages from the website, they open perfectly - it is only when the try to use the menu (which has exectly the same links) that they get the error 404's.

BTW thet are using DHCP and so aquire the DNS automatically on each of their machines.

I'm out of my depth

buzzy

217 posts

Master Geek

#291266 19-Jan-2010 18:18

Yah sorry - I was replying at work and ran out of time to put together a better reply.

The links in the HTML look fine. If the user can manually type in a URL and it works then there's no problem with DNS or HTTP requests to retrieve the pages.

I'd suggest having a look at the Favourite link that the user's using - it's possible that the Favourite is actually a link to HostGator or another proxy service, which is then retrieving the page initial and displaying it; this would mean when the user clicks a relative link, something breaks because the link's not explicitly referring to the NZmotorhome site (your links are "relative" in the sense that they link to "/NZMotorhome/whatever/something.html" as opposed to linking to "http://www.nzmotorhome.co.nz/NZmotorhome/whatever/something.html" - there's nothing wrong with relative links and I"m not suggesting you need to change them; they're fine as they are).

Lastly, you could also ask the user to check the proxy settings on the PC (Control Panel -> Internet Options -> Connections Tab -> LAN Settings -> Automatic Settings or Proxy). I wouldn't suggest changing these unless you know what you're doing, but it might be worth getting a screenshot of that page and posting it so we can see what he's using as a proxy.

Cheers
Buzzy

OldRepublicJedi

53 posts

Master Geek

#292265 22-Jan-2010 16:39

Small suggestion... has the user tried logging onto the PC with a different account, prefarably a new account with new local profile etc? Corrupt local profiles can cause so many different problems....

OldRepublicJedi

53 posts

Master Geek

#294402 29-Jan-2010 17:04

Hi there, how did you get on?