All websites seem to work, except for those on the microsoft.com domain?

Question

I found an old reformatted computer somewhere, with Windows XP installed. It's a bit faulty; I can't get the monitor settings to work on anything other than the lowest resolution. But that's not the point of this question.

I've hooked it up to a LAN line, and it's now browsing the internets pretty fine. I'm actually making this post from it right now. I'm working on Firefox, but I'd like to be able to upgrade Internet Explorer, or at least try to install the service pack upgrades.

There's only one problem -- attempting to browse to any website under the microsoft.com domain returns a Server Not Found error. I've tried changing my DNS settings to Google DNS, but nothing seems to work. It's as if whoever reformatted this computer had some sort of overzealous notion of censorship. All other computers on this network are able to access microsoft.com domain names perfectly fine.

Does anyone know what could perhaps be causing this problem?

EDIT:

Malware is likely the culprit so far, as malwarebytes.org is also behaving the same way that microsoft.com is behaving.

After a scan, it seems like that old Conficker bug is the culprit. Anyone have any idea how it could have gotten onto a system that was reformatted a few years back? Oh well.

Answer 1

If weird stuff like that is happening, your best bet is normally just to wipe and reinstall.

However, a lot of malware stops you going to microsoft sites, partly to block windows updates. Check your hosts file (C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts), and run a scan with a good AV tool (I like MalwareBytes), to check it's no that.

Answer 2

Have a look at %SystemRoot%\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts. If you find entries (lines) for domains you cannot connect to you should remove them. Unless you have special requirements this file should only contain a single entry for localhost.

To troubleshoot you problem you should also try to execute tracert www.microsoft.com. You should be able to determine if the problem is a DNS problem or a connection problem.

Answer 3

Yeah that hosts file that you posted looks ordinary. Are you able to go to microsoft.com by using their IP address instead of the DNS name? Type "207.46.197.32" without quotes into the address bar of the web browser.

Are you able to do an nslookup microsoft.com? You should get results like this:

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    microsoft.com
Addresses:  207.46.232.182
          207.46.197.32

You said this system was reformatted, so it hopefully doesn't have any viruses? Viruses sometimes block microsoft.com in order to prevent online support and windows updates. It might be worth doing a few virus scans as described here.

Answer 4

For what it's worth, I came across this useful tool recently:

http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/

...which does what it says on the tin.