Problem opening YouTube with Windows 7

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I get the following error message when I try to access Youtube or a similar video website on my Windows 7 (64-bit) system. This occurs with both Foxfire and IE 8 browsers, does not happen on an XP system on the same local network (i.e. I don’t think it is an Internet / Server / ISP problem). :confused:

Error message:

404 Not Found

nginx

Grateful for all suggestions / solutions / fixes …

Jim Hughes

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Welcome to the Lounge!!

Are you having difficulties getting to other sites on the Windows 7 system?

If this just started happening, have you tried a system restore to a time when all was working OK?

Joe

--Joe

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Hi Joe – Thanks …

I am not aware of problems accessing other sites … I don’t use the social network sites myself, but get directed to a Youtube reference now and again from my email or from a message board similar to this one.

I recently did a system restore to fix another problem (it did) but it did not fix this one – maybe I should try another restore.

If I find a solution I will post it here.

JimH

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If the links are from email, what happens if you copy the link and then paste it into the browser address line?

Can you go to YouTube directly and search for the video(s) in question?

Joe

--Joe

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Pasting / Typing “http://www.youtube.com” into a browser address line results in the previously-mentioned error message.

Which means I cannot go to YouTube at all …

(Thanks for your continued interest).

JimH

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Is this a home or work PC?

Joe

--Joe

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It is both, i.e. it is installed at home, and is used both for a home-based business and for personal use.

I just performed another system restore – no difference.

I have 3 accounts on the system as well as my own regular one, and all 4 show the same problem with Youtube with both IE8 and Firefox.

I guess I can live with this if I have to – Youtube is not a critical website to me.

Any more ideas, anyone?

JimHH

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The error message means that your system cannot establish an http connection to a server at or via nginx. What is not clear to me is why it should want to do that when you are asking it to establish a connection to youtube.com (aka google).

nginx can be used as a proxy service, so it’s possible you may have a malware infection that has hijacked your hosts file and that is attempting to re-direct you to a compromised (but now possibly torn down) site, or your internet connection may be setup to use a proxy service, or your ISP may have a problem.

A few things to attempt to clarify what might be going on:

[*]Can you connect another independent machine to the network? Can it browse to youtube? If yes, then the issue is on your machine, if no, then perhaps your ISP uses nginx and has a problem. My bet is that a known good machine will connect.
[*]
[*]On your machine, can you open a command prompt a try ping youtube.com? Do you get 4 responses, or do you get packet loss?
[*]
[*]If you get 4 good responses from the ping, what happens if you browse to the ip address in the ping response? Hopefully you get to google.com.
[*]
[*]In windows explorer on your machine, drill down to C:WindowsSystem32etcdrivers (your path to the Windows directory may be slightly different, depending on your installation). Inside the etc directory, there should be 4 or 5 files, the first of which should be hosts, followed by hosts.sam. Right click on the hosts file and select “open with” and choose notepad. Check the content of the hosts file does not include any re-direction of youtube to an ip address. If it does, you may have a malware infection.
[*]
[*]Open Internet Options on you machine (click Start and enter Internet Options in the search box). Select the Connections tab and then click LAN Settings. Verify the Proxy Server tick box is not checked.

Hopefully one of those will shed a little light on what is happening and will go a good way to identifying the fix.

Oops posted at the same time JoeP517 was replying. He is heading in the same direction as me, so take his advice first and see what comes….

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If you have a router, have you checked its configuration?

Have you checked the Windows hosts file?

What are the results of “tracert http://www.youtube.com”?

Joe

--Joe

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In answer to JoeP517, I tried the following:

1. {If you have a router, have you checked its configuration?}

Yes, and it appears (to me, anyway) to be OK.

2. {Have you checked the Windows hosts file?}

I drilled down to System32 – it does not contain a folder “etc”.

3. {What are the results of “tracert http://www.youtube.com”?}

It shows 14 hops, the first 10 of which name different servers belonging to my ISP, and the last two are:

networklayer.com [74.55.252.86]
google.com [74.55.76.213]

I did a reverse IPL lookup on 74.55.76.213 and it came up with this :- d5.4c.364a.static.theplanet.com

I hope some of the above tells you what is wrong here.

JimHH

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You can find the hosts file in:
C:WindowsSystem32driversetc

Jerry

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I found etc and opened the 4 files there with notepad – they showed various mappings of one entity to another, but none referenced Youtube.

(Incidentally, my system is a 64-bit version 6.1 SP1 Windows 7 Home Premium).

Thanks, guys, for the help – maybe we are getting close to a solution.

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I found a link to a fix – which turned out to be a downloadable anti-malware program: Combofix.

The Youtube link now works fine !!!

JimHH

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