Unable to Open Website

There is one website that I cannot open in either IE or Firefox on just one computer on my home network. All the other computers, laptops, desktops and handheld devices open the site without a difficulty. This includes another identical laptop.

Trouble is, the website is for my employer, MetLife (www.metlife.com) and I need it for information at times. I have tried most of the suggestions I searched here and other sites. I have flushed DNS, tried pinging it unsuccessfully, tried addressing the IP address only. All to no avail.

The one oddity that I have noticed is that if I use my VPN to connect to the company's network, DNS has no trouble resolving Metlife.com and goes right to the site in either browser. Of course, once I'm secured past their firewall it should be resolving through some entirely different servers.

Can anyone think of anything else to try? I've used CA and Spybot to clean the machine and when I sit it side-by-side to the second identical laptop, I cannot see anything with IPCONFIG that looks any different among them.

Anything different between the two laptops when you type "route print"?

I presume that the laptops are connected via wireless only?

This one works because all traffic is destined to the 192.168.1.3 interface. The interface number can be ignored as it has no impact if only one is connected.

This is not clear to me. What's the default gateway on this laptop?

I'm only interested in the default gateway and the line(s) that contain(s) 255.255.255.255, e.g.,

Network Destination Netmask Gateway Interface Metric
...
255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255 192.168.1.3 192.168.1.3 1
...
Default Gateway: 192.168.1.1


You can also execute ipconfig /all to see if there are differences, other than the IP address.

The VPN doesn't connect to the same server. If you haven't already done so, check the firewall and make sure that the web site is in the list of safe sites for IE or Firefox. If you can get to any other site except for that one, then something is denying access to it. Same problem if you connect the laptop via the Ethernet port?

What's different when pinging the site? Also perform a tracert to the site. Both laptops should get to it using the same path.

Then you might have a DNS problem. Run ipconfig /all to see is they have the same DNS. If not, do the following on the laptop taht doesn't work:

ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew

If that doesn't resolve the issue, check the contents of windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts.

Edit: ping times out because you eventually go through a router where ICMP traffic has been disabled.

I can't determine what's different, but if all PCs get the correct IP address for Metlife.com, but one doesn't, then something has to be different. You could always add "216.163.250.139 Metlife.com" to the hosts file. Not the ideal solution, but it should work.

Adding an entry to the hosts file doesn't do anything for ipconfig/displaydns. There has to be something loaded on that laptop that prevents it from accessing that site. Can't you bring it to your IT people to have them figure out what the problem is?

Anything in the network interface configuration or the firewall that could cause that issue?