I can ping facebook but get a time out error

Question

Yesterday I was on facebook: no problems I can get on with my phone but not on my PC. I've tried other browsers.
I am on a home PC POS Windows Vista machine.

I have flushed DNS and I can ping facebook.
I get an IP Address of 173.252.120.61 and it works.
I have not downloaded any new add ons.

PS> I am barely computer literate, although I can look up fixes and follow step by step instructions.

Answer 1

Just some points:

host www.facebook.com 

give as answer

www.facebook.com is an alias for star.c10r.facebook.com.
star.c10r.facebook.com has address 31.13.93.3

If you try you can ping to 31.13.93.3 and get an answer.

As you can check e.g. on ipaddress 173.252.120.61 belongs effectively to Facebook, so it doesn't seems to be an IP spoofing.

However this do not means that the internal machine has to answer to your ping request.

Administrators can set internal machines to avoid to answer to ping request even to limit DDos problems.

How to proceed... in many different ways; you have to understand why by attempt. So:

• First check if your mobile is connected on the same network of your pc.
• If you have another device that you can connect to your home network connection to internet use it to check if the problem is of the computer or of the network.
• Then check for the configuration of your computer, if you have some firewall active that excludes browsing of that IP group, or if you have some program that limits the internet browsing.
• Check for malware or virus.
• Try to start with a private session of firefox (or of another browser) that will not read anything from the cache.
• If all fails try to create a new user and to log in from it.
• If even this fails try to download and install on an usb pen drive a live version of an operative system (e.g. Ubuntu): reboot on this and check on your new device...