Local Hostname Wont work?

Yesterday i reinstalled my computer with a copy of windows xp pro with sp2 intergrated.

I then added iis. And i can test pages locally fine using ip addresses i.e 127.0.0.1 or my lan address and the site still works remotely using wan ip. But local hostnames wont work? i.e http://localhost or http://<computername> Eventually the request times out. But if i try to load it on another computer on the lan using the computername it does work!

Its weird because i also have a ftp running on my pc (serv-u not microsoft) and this loads fine if you type ftp://localhost in address bar.

I've checked everything i can think of but nothing seems to fix this.

Any suggestions

Have you checked your "hosts" file to make sure localhost is in there and associated with 127.0.0.1??

Yes i did. I even added my domain name in the host file and that works fine but localhost wont or the computername

This is all from the server console, right?

What happens if you open a command prompt and enter ping localhost

You should get a reply. You can use telnet from a command prompt to test the connection to your local IIS

telnet localhost 80

On my XP Pro after a couple Enters on the kb I get a message back from IIS.