Internet connection, there but inaccessable?

My grandfather called up and told me the internet on his account wasn't working. I told him to try it on my xp account and he said the firefox didn't work but then the IE worked. After that he logged in back on his account and the internet was working there too. For about a day or two, he would have to go through this process to get the internet working on his account, until it stopped working on my account as well. Even though he can't access the internet, there is an internet connection icon on the status bar. The interesting thing is that even though I can't browse the internet on the internet browsers, my other programs seem to have access to the internet. Spybot could update its definitions and my email program can connect to gmail. Spybot and Adaware only found tracking cookies and my avast antivirus is coming out negative. Could the Creative or ATI software be affecting something with the internet connection??

Internet connection, there but inaccessable?kawasaki

I just have the feeling there's something on your machine that's flying below the radar.

One possibility: Check your running tasks (via Task Manager) and/or your startup task list (msconfig) for any of these: tasks

netpefr32.exe

flsmontr.exe

ulksystem32.exe

If you see them, you may have a smitfraud variant. If so, check out the second entry in this URL (it's huge) for what worked for me:

http://gladiator-antivirus.com/forum/ind...

Also, search the Web for any names that that look suspicious.

Much good luck

Internet connection, there but inaccessable?nortan antivirus

try restoreing the system to an earlier date when it did work