Google/YouTube/Yahoo Don't Work?

[mev1205]

So this has been a problem for awhile, although I've been studying abroad in Europe and haven't had the time to deal with it until now. Out of the blue about two months ago, Google/Yahoo/Youtube all stopped working on Snow Leopard for me. It has nothing to do with the browser - none of these sites work on any browser and even my Gmail won't load in the Mac Mail app because it cannot connect to Google. I've been having to use my Lion Preview partition in order to access Google or YouTube and I'm getting sick and tired of having to switch between operating systems to simply look up a video or something. Has anyone experienced similar problems to this? I've tried a virus scan but it found nothing. Odd thing is is that occasionally one of these sites will work, for instance the other day I was able to use YouTube for a few hours but then my ability to use it suddenly vanished and it reverted back to the usual "Firefox cannot establish a connection to the server".

Should I just delete the Lion Preview partition and upgrade my entire system to Lion to solve the problem? Or is there a better way? I've heard mixed reviews about Lion so I'm hesitant to upgrade my entire system to it.

 

[Peace]

Are you using a proxy service or have some sort of parental control turned on ?

 

[mev1205]

Are you using a proxy service or have some sort of parental control turned on ?

Nope, no proxy, firewall, or any sort of parental control. I don't even have an anti-virus software running, I only run that software when I think something is wrong. So I'm not quite sure what could be blocking it... I read about someone who had a similar problem and something on their computer was blocking port 80, which evidently is the port required to access Google/YouTube, but I have no idea how to unblock it

 

[GGJstudios]

Out of the blue about two months ago, Google/Yahoo/Youtube all stopped working on Snow Leopard for me.

Check your DNS settings in both your Mac and your router. To find out how to do that, read the "Why am I being redirected to other sites?" section of the link below.

I've tried a virus scan but it found nothing.

That's because there's nothing to find. You don't need any 3rd party antivirus app to keep your Mac malware-free. Macs are not immune to malware, but no true viruses exist in the wild that can run on Mac OS X, and there never have been any since it was released 10 years ago. You cannot infect your Mac simply by visiting a website, unzipping a file, opening an email attachment or clicking on a web link. The only malware in the wild that can affect Mac OS X is a handful of trojans, which cannot infect your Mac unless you actively install them, and they can be easily avoided with some basic education, common sense and care in what software you install. Also, Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Lion have anti-malware protection built in, further reducing the need for 3rd party antivirus apps.

Mac Virus/Malware Info​

 

[mev1205]

Turns out that it wasn't a DNS issue, evidently PeerGuardian (even though it wasn't running and hasn't run for some time) was blocking the ports required by Google and Yahoo. I ran that, disabled the filters, then uninstalled and was finally able to access all those websites again. Thanks for the help!