Internet not working

Ritchmeister

So I'm visiting my brother and he tells me his internet hasn't been working for a month now.

It's Vista and when you look at the network connections symbol in the bottom corner it says that it connected to both local and internet and also he can play games online on Steam, however any web browsers or msn do not work at all.

Anyone got any ideas?

Torque Monkey

Most likely some sort of malware infection. Download and run MalwareBytes and SuperAntiSpyware, both available for download for free on http://download.com/ - make sure to update them. And, does he have LimeWire on the computer by chance?

Let me know if that gets it or not, if it doesn't I have a number of other suggestion's for ya.

Ritchmeister

Thanks for that, but no dice. Though I'm sure it was of benefit to his pc in general, unfortunately the problem is still there.

Jimmy King

Is he running any sort of firewall at all? I know on XP I have seen a few cases where the built in windows firewall just randomly (apparently, I won't 100% rule out malware doing it) blocked things on occasion, inlcuding IE.

Also, in a web browser, have you tried putting in the IP for something rather than just a hostname/domain name URL to see if that works? How about ping, traceroute, etc?

I'd Fuck Chuck Lidell Up

Jimmy King wrote: »

Is he running any sort of firewall at all? I know on XP I have seen a few cases where the built in windows firewall just randomly (apparently, I won't 100% rule out malware doing it) blocked things on occasion, inlcuding IE.

Also, in a web browser, have you tried putting in the IP for something rather than just a hostname/domain name URL to see if that works? How about ping, traceroute, etc?

this

ping google from cmd. if it can ping it fine it's a problem with your browser; reinstall it.

Bowen

Check to see if a proxy was turned on in IE. Probably would affect steam too though.

Scooter

Tried rebooting the router and modem? I have to do mine on a regular basis, sometimes stuff like IRC or downloads will continue working but web browsing shuts down til I reset one or the other.

Torque Monkey

start
run
cmd
/ping www.google.com
/tracert www.google.com

see what those come up with

neosoul

This one is interesting.

The fact that you said you can play 'Steam' means that some ports AND parts of the 'internet' is working. Which web browsers have you tried? Both Firefox and Internet Explorer?

Try bringing him Firefox on a USB thumb drive and installing in the NON-default directory and trying there (c:\program files\firefoxtest for example).

Also try creating another user (don't give it full privileges yet) and try the web browser there. See if the problem is isolated to just his account.

Good luck!

Ritchmeister

Torque Monkey wrote: »

start
run
cmd
/ping www.google.com
/tracert www.google.com

see what those come up with

it just says "/ping" is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file, same with tracert

I've tried rebooting the modem and everything but no help.

Ritchmeister

As for a firewall, he isn't running any and we can't even turn on the windows one, it says something about "Group Policy" stopping us from doing so.

urahonky

It's not /ping, just ping :P

Torque Monkey

whooops, habbit to use slashes in command prompt(sfc) - as urahonky mentioned, just ping www.google.com and tracert www.google.com