289347 - Redirection of www.compaq.com fails with status bar indicating "waiting for www.compaq.com..."

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Ray]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050317 Firefox/1.0.2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050317 Firefox/1.0.2

When entering http://www.compaq.com into the location bar, the browser fails to
navigate to that page. The status bar hangs at "waiting for www.compaq.com..."
MS Internet Explorer successfully refirects to http://h18000.www1.hp.com. I
tested on three different computers with the same result. I also tested Mozilla
1.7.6 on two WinXP machines with the same result.

Further testing shows that pings to www.compaq.com time out, but the URL does
resolve to 161.114.19.252. If I enter this IP address directly into the location
bar, I am taken to the Compaq page on the HP web site. Also, if I enter the
redirected URL (h18000.www1.hp.com) this also successfully takes me to the
Compaq page.

Doing an nslookup on www.compaq.com returns a "Non-authoritative answer" of
161.114.19.252 (same resolution as a ping).

Finally, I have tested both behind a firewalled router on a broadband connection
as well as using a "naked" (non-firewalled) dial-up connection on a completely
different ISP (using different DNS servers). The redirection fails in every case
on Firefox and Mozilla, but succeeds on IE6.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Enter http://www.compaq.com into the location bar.
2.Press Enter or click the "Go" button.
3.The browser fails to navigate to the desired web page, displaying "waiting for
www.compaq.com..." in the status bar.

Actual Results:  
Nothing, other than the status bar message "waiting for www.compaq.com..."

Expected Results:  
Take the user to the requested web page.

No extensions, themes, or add-ons installed. Latest java plug in from Sun
installed (v1.5.0_02).

Problem has also been reported to the HP/Compaq webmaster, but no reply has been
received.

Comment 1

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Works for me on apparently the same build:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050317
Firefox/1.0.2

Comment 2

[Gabriel Chadwick]

Works for me to using Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b2)
Gecko/20050406 Firefox/1.0+ . Please reopen when you have more details to narrow
down this bug.

Comment 3

[Ray]

Update: I discovered that this problem was caused by my antivirus application
(Avast Home 6.4.623), which has a "Web Shield" component. Disabling Web Shield
fixed the problem. Alwil software (the developer of Avast) has acknowledged the
problem and is working on a fix.

I apologize for the false alarm.