Yahhh. No Rails spoken here. WEBrick runs, but the browser can't get a response. And it just hangs there. No logs. And you can't kill it. And you look everywhere on the system for some record of what's happening. And you scour the net, searching for a tidbit of information that could lead you to the truth, a fix and salvation... What would keep WEBrick and a browser from talking? All the host stuff is ok, but packets aren't happening. The browser has no trouble similar getting to WSAD. Telnet can sense something, because going to the localhost and port redirects to telnet's own port 23. It has to be something buried down in the layers of the machine's communication mechanism. Hmmmm... Aha! `windowsxp.mvps.org/winsock.htm` has the scoop. This machine I'm on is old, has likely been exposed to a nightmarish collection of users and uses, and some fairly icky viruses along the way. But since I'm running XP-SP1, I can't reset the `winsock` setting directly. But happily, `www.snapfiles.com/get/winsockxpfix.html` had a little executable to fix the problem. Download. Run. Reboot. Rails again. Happiness and sighs. Many thanks to Scott Tabar, for finding the light at the end of this dark tunnel. And pox on you, Windows.