i killed the web...except for google

Or so I thought.

Strangely enough, after working for several hours redesigning one of my websites today, my entire internet connection appeared to have collapsed. I checked my modem and DSL connection and everything looked okay. Then I tried Google. It worked. For some odd reason, I could search and surf Google but nothing else. I couldn't check my email, FTP anything or visit any other websites. Absolutely strange. The problem persisted in both Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer.

I did some searching for solutions and had to view Google's cached version of the sites listed in the search results since they wouldn't load. I tried a lengthy MTU registry fix proposed by Microsoft that didn't fix anything. Then I tried entering a few things from a command line. Just in case you ever run into this odd problem, here's what I did that solved it:

Click START > RUN
Type CMD & hit enter
Type ipconfig /dnsflush & hit enter
Type ipconfig /release & hit enter
Type ipconfig /renew & hit enter

I was back to surfing in no time. I'm hoping that this doesn't become a common occurrence. There were two potential triggers to the problem. I downloaded and tried out a new torrent download client earlier today called BitTornado, and my version of CoreFTP crashed unexpectedly in the middle of a file upload and I had to do a CTRL+ALT+Delete forced shut down to stop it. None-the-less, I think I'll be uninstalling the torrent client and find another FTP client if it crashes again like that.