So before family war is declared at the cheetary which is not so jolly cavorting at the moment, what could be blocking my direct access to Pprune.

1. BT. (My provider right or wrong.)? They say that this is not the case for any website as innocuous as this one.
2. Pprune themselves whose IP address direct produces no results?
It has been suggested that Pprune have blocked a whole mass of IP addresses of which mine is one.
3. Any other source of interference such as my family's own security system?

Perhaps a moderator would be able to comment on point 2? That would be kind. It's not that I have so much to contribute to Pprune but that I use search engines to find out so much that is useful on Pprune for my own enjoyment. This I can no longer do.
Thanks one and all. As might be apparent, my computer/internet knowledge is of the plug it in and push the button level, basic to say the least.

Google for and visit Spamhaus.
That organisatin maintains lists of IP addresses it feels are bad and innocent addresses can be caught up in this.
You can look on there for your IP address.
If you are not sure of your IP address, use the free "What is my IP" utility.

What happens when you put pprune into the address box?

Thank you for the replies.
I'll have to do a little research on Spamhaus. I'm reluctant to put my ip address into an unknown search engine.
When I type in Pprune.org or the Pprune ip address into the box, the blue highlighter goes as far as the end of the word Pprune and then, that's it. The page doesn't change at all or sometimes just goes blank with the message that the server is not responding.

Spamhaus are perfectly kosher.

cavortingcheetah,

The IP address you used to post your last message is NOT on any of the Spamhaus blocked lists.

To my knowledge, IB have not blocked any IP addresses from the country that the above IP address is registered to.

Blocks of IP addresses from China, Korea, Phillipines and Russia, among others, have been blocked to prevent spam.

SD

Thank you mixture and Saab Dastard.
The IP address I used was a proxy one. Mine is not listed in Spamhaus so I am none the wiser. This present address allows me to communicate with Pprune but not, for example, to initiate a forum search or to send private messages. If I want to do that I have to go to the Apple shop, for example, and use their internet connection on my laptop.
Strange to say but this is entirely beyond my comprhension.

try manually using one of these DNS servers.

You will have to go into your network settings and tell it to use them instead of picking up the DNS from the router.

Or it might be that you already do have something set and you just have to turn it back on to the router setting.

Try using one of the OpenDNS DNS servers:

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

There is also the possibility that your system has some malware that has affected name resolution - either through modifying the hosts file or your DNS server entry.

SD

And both of the tasks use a php script so may be you have scripts turned off.

Oh dear.... :hmm:

PHP scripts are 100% server side. It is absolutely impossible to block them on a browser.

Javascripts on the other side..... but then only morons would use client-side scripts for authentication !

Was never a web person, just network and server maint.

H'mm maybe a entry in the local hosts file. Linking the address to that IP address would work.

its in system32\drivers\etc\hosts

You will have to change the security permissions before you can change it.

Haven't fiddled with that in windows for years though so they might have screwed with it.