A friend's web designer dissappeared. Now I'm trying to help with the page design but we don't know the name of the company whose server contains the files. Is there a way to find out the company name?

Yes, go here

http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/in...

find out more information about your domain name. this is whois checker and will give you information about who owns it, address, email contact, phone etc.

very bottom there is a place called DNS = this will show you your server.

Yes you could track it down through the ip address.

You could put the host name (= url) in the apropriate field on www.dnsstuff.com and see what the result is. Usually you would find the hosting company without a problem.

type in ip number here http://www.zoneedit.com/lookup.html