I have suspected the servers all along, I think the IP addresses of them got changed during the "upgrade". Dell Tech support could not verify this or what the IP addresses of the servers were supposed to be.

I used nslookup to verify the IP addresses, there are 2 different ones. Here are the results:

Non-authoritative answer:

Name:  ausoladpds2web.us.dell.com

Address:  143.166.83.22

Non-authoritative answer:

Name:  ausoladsds2web.us.dell.com

Address:  143.166.224.27

Using the ipconfig /flushdns to clear the cache on one of the XP machines and it did not change the symptoms.

Our internet access is through an ISP and they provide the DNS servers for us.

I just attempted to reach 143.166.83.22 (ausoladpds2web.us.dell.com) via a browser, and was not able to. The machine is not on the Internet as of now (1305 PDT, 12/31/03). So your support software's not corrupted.

It's possible that the IP address of the server has changed. The name I found (shown above) may not be the name the support client software is trying to reach. I don't have the Dell Support client software installed anywhere, so I don't know whether it uses a "hard-wired" IP address or a name.

If it's a name, the IP address may have changed and the DNS cache on the XP machines may not be up to date. Try ipconfig /flushdns to clear the cache, and see if the symptom changes.

If you know what name ( something.us.dell.com) the Dell Support client software is trying to reach, use nslookup to see if the IP address returned agrees with the one in your proxy log. If it does, then the server is simply down, and the "try later" advice would be right.

(edit) You'd posted into another thread where someone else was having similar problems. The other poster listed the name eservicesupport.ins.dell.com as the name the client was trying to reach. That name resolves to IP address 143.166.224.27.

If that IP address (143.166.224.27) is looked up, the name returned is ausoladsds2web.us.dell.com.

However...attempting to reach http://eservicesupport.ins.dell.com/ also fails - that one's not connected to the Internet either!

The bottom line is that the Dell Support server isn't available right now.

Jim

Message Edited by jimw on 12-31-2003 01:46 PM

This looks like a Dell problem, and a pretty serious one, given how many copies of the Dell Alert client there must be. I haven't checked the other forum "network" boards, but I suspect there are more than just the two threads here in the Dimension network board about this problem.

(edit) Here's another report of the same issue.

Someone from Dell is going to need to unsnarl this. Regardless of which IP address gets accessed, there's no machine running. The connection isn't being "refused", there's no answer at all!

Jim

Message Edited by jimw on 01-13-2004 10:54 AM

Sounds like a Dell DNS configuration issue - which they ned to sort out - at the very least add a DNS alias for the offending DNS name to a real and active IP address.

In the meantime can only think of two courses of action to maybe help :

(1) Look for the Dell Update Service in "Control panel ->Admin Tools -> Services" and if it is a defined process service runing under XP - set it to disable

(2) Add a static null route on your PC's for teh Dell Update IP address to 127.0.0.1 - so that it does not wsate b/w or network traffic on firewalls..........i.e tell PC to send it to the "bit bucket"