Connected, but not connecting!

[Xiode]

Recently, my brother's computer has had a problem and somehow or another, I got deemed the one to fix it. >.<

Anyhow, this is what's happening - he's connected to the internet. You can ping just about any address and have it work 4/4 times. However, when you type a URL or such in a browser (I've tried both IE and Firefox), it doesn't want to connect to anything. On the status bar, it'll be like half full and display a message like "Waiting..." or "Connecting to...." but not do anything.

So I'm stumped! What's the problem? He's connected to the internet, yet it won't let him go anywhere! I've tried also typing in the local IP of the router, like if I wanted to change a setting for instance, and it won't load that page either.

 

[jlazzaro]

try to repair your tcp stack / winsock...

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/winsock.htm

 

[NuroMancer]

Run a spyware check,
Remove all toolbars,
Up to date Anti viri?

 

[nweaver]

check for proxy servers

are you pinging by name, or IP?

 

[Xiode]

Originally posted by: nweaver
check for proxy servers

are you pinging by name, or IP?

Both. For instance:

"ping google.com"
"ping 127.0.0.1"

 

[Xiode]

Anyone?

 

[Nocturnal]

Spyware would be the number one cause of something like this. If not, check to see if he has any existing software based firewalls such as Zone Alarm or any other that may still be on. Even if he uninstalled the firewall a lot of the time I see parts of the firewall which block the incoming/outgoing connections doesn't get removed properly therefore causing the computer to not want to connect to any site. Let us know.

 

[Xiode]

So if uninstalled hardware is blocking connections, how would you know that's the problem, and how would you go about fixing it?

 

[Kibbo86]

I'm pretty sure he was referring to software firewalls. Did you follow the link above referring to the winsock and tcp/ip? If you've uninstalled all 3rd party software firewalls and disabled the windows firewall, and he's still getting these symptoms in both browsers, check out the link posted by jlazzaro. I'm assuming that either he's not on a network or that other machines on the network aren't experiencing the same problem.

 

[Xiode]

There's 4 computers on the same wireless network, mine being one of them. No other computers are experiencing the same problem.

 

[jlazzaro]

Originally posted by: Xiode
There's 4 computers on the same wireless network, mine being one of them. No other computers are experiencing the same problem.

as stated 3 times so far, have you tried repairing the stack?