I can't open Amazon on any computer in this house

[Roskva]

Or any website hosted by Amazon, which these days includes M&S and Mothercare.

Our broadband is networked to the house and office through dh's server. My laptop isn't networked, but uses broadband through wireless connection. Dh's computer geek friend who set the whole lot up is a paranoid control freak, so the security settings on the server are very tight.

We don't have problems with other websites, just with amazon. Does anyone else have this problem.

That seems a bit extreme. I can't think of anything risky about Amazon or Mothercare

Can you get him back to correct it or must you figure out what he did?

You might see if 87.238.83.168 gets you to amazon, but I think the site might not work properly unless you use the domain name.

I think it's a bit extreme, too. I did wonder if it might be anything to do with the amount of pictures on most amazon pages - on the rare occasions I can half download it, none of the images will show even if I click on individual "show image" buttons. I've enabled pop ups, which doesn't help, and I can't think of anything else.

Are you using IE? Could you try opening it in Firefox instead - seems a bit weird though!

It's no better using Firefox. I'm waiting for a friend to get her wireless set up; if amazon works on my laptop using a different wireless connection, then I will know that the paranoid geek has done something silly with the security settings on our server.

This sounds strangely familiar, i cant get on ebay.

Ebay works fine for me!

Have a look to see if there is a hosts file
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts (on the server PC). There is probably one called hosts.sam but that's just an example file. The proper one has no filetype, it's just called hosts.

If it exists it may have lists of domains like this which it blocks

127.0.0.1 ads.adbrite.com
127.0.0.1 b1.adbrite.com
127.0.0.1 adbrite.com

It's used to stop adverts among other things because any domain name you put on the right is sent to the IP on the left. Sending it to 127.0.0.1 is discarding it.

Dh won't let me have administrator access to the server pc, mainly because he dosn't know what to do with it, and assumes I don't either . In fact, dh can't download anything onto his own pc or laptop without help from paranoid geek, so guess what? He has to use the webcam on mine when he wants to call his family, I've got the software for his camera and his MP3 player on mine, etc grrrrr. What is it with men and machines?