I have an XP pro PC that can't open web pages or install any patches. I get a page not found error in IE 6.0, and a 'connection refused by host' error in Mozilla Firefox. Both browsers will work in safe mode. No firewall software is installed, and the MS firewall is off. In real mode, i can perform a ping, nslookup, and traceroute without problems, and can also check mail through Outlook. If I try to manually install Service pack 2, or any other update, i just get a 'setup error' without any hex codes. I've tried repairing winsock with XPWinsockFix, and by manually removing the registry keys and reinstalling TCP to no avail. The PC comes up clean on updated scans with,AVG, Norton, Adaware, Spybot, Microsoft Anti-Spyware, and Hijack this. I've also performed a repair install of XP, and have tried creating new user profiles with admin privileges. Does anyone have any other ideas as to what could be happening? This is the first PC that has stumped me in 8 years and I'm getting annoyed!

Don't know about the patches but i was having trouble with websites. Turns out spybot had found and deleted dso1 exploit. When i told spybot to restore this everything worked fine again. Hope this helps