Browser woes.

[eno]

Got a call from my old neighbour .... her comp was causing a headache ..... apart from the fact that it is ancient and bought from PC World it was running fairly well untill yesterday.

Yesterday evening her teenage son logged on to do some research for an essay.... after a few minutes AVG detected something and healed it. He checked the virus vault  and deleted the infected file, did a rescan and everything was fine. After half an hour of browsing he logged off and went for his evening meal. After eating he went back to continue his research..... internet explorer wouldn't connect to the home page ...... or any other page, he did a restart and tried again .... same result. No problems running anything offline and there is an internet connection being made ..... just no pages showing.

I went round today to investigate ..... after 45 mins of finding absolutely nothing wrong I decided it would be helpful to contact their ISP  tech support as all I could think of was a problem with their asdl modem. We went through all the settings including resetting the DNS all to no avail. He suggested spyware, to which I agreed. However without being able to bring up pages and therefore unable to  update AVG, Adaware or any other spy/malwware/antivirus programs it's impossible to tell for certain as it could be something completely new.

I've advised them to backup everything stored offline just incase a reformat..... all be it back to Windows2000, they don't have an XP install disc just a recovery floppy..... is necessary


Any suggestions as to another course of action would be most appreciated ..... I seem to have reached the limit.

[Politically Incorrect]

Have you checked firewall settings?
Do a diagnostics scan of the modem via device manager?

[Mushroom_Farmer]

The browser didn't default itself to 'never dial a connection' by chance did it?

[eno]

The browser didn't default itself to 'never dial a connection' by chance did it?

Yes

Have you checked firewall settings?
Do a diagnostics scan of the modem via device manager?

Firewall settings are fine ....... they aren't using the windows firewall they use Zonealarm and I've checked the settings in that.

[WebbPA]

Even though the comp indicates it's connected are you sure?

Try a ping test.  Type "ping www.google.com -f -l 1492" into the Run box or a command line box.

If it's connected he should be able to update Adaware and probably the AV (I don't use AVG) - the programs should connect and update on their own - even if the browser doesn't work.

They maybe run a repair of IE or (I can't resist) install Firefox.

And disable ZoneAlarm until you're sure it's connected.  After you're sure you can re-enable and start troubleshooting ZA.

[eno]

I'll be heading over there next week to continue diagnosing the problem..... so keep the suggestions comming please gents.

[Splat762]

Here is a off the wall comment....well not really off the wall because this happened to me.

I was surfing the web just fine, like your friend, and came back to my computer later that evening to find that my IE wasn't working either...couldn't connect to anything but everything ran just fine offline.  I did the same thing, spyware scan, anti-virus check, called tech support for my ISP and troubleshoot the system for two hours (resetting the modem and such) until we narrowed it down to my ethernet port and NIC card.

Somewhere during the day my onboard NIC (built into my motherboard) gave up the ghost and died on me.  I went out and bought a brand new 10/100/1000 NIC card, installed it and plugged my ethernet cable from my modem in and...bang, back on the internet.

Anyway just a thought, might want to check the NIC and ethernet port.

[WebbPA]

Yeah, there are any number of things that could give you a false positive connection result.

The only way to verify a connection is the ping test, bypassing the router and with all firewalls and AV disabled.

(I'd put my money on a problem with ZoneAlarm.  It's more trouble than it's worth.)

[Kaworu]

If they are using any type of modem, you should look at reinstalling the modem drivers. Thats right. I had this EXACT thing happen to me last year when I still had dial-up access. By the way, what ISP do they have? this might be of help to someone.