Hello everyone this has stumped me for the last few days. We left home for a few days for a short holiday and when we returned, Firefox would not connect to the net. (I'm using an IBM Thinkpad with WinXP, Svc pack 2). However, Internet Explorer and Skype would connect. I uninstalled and reinstalled Firefox, updated Skype and IE, and now all 3 programs cannot connect to the net! This is the message I get on FireFox: "Network Timeout: the server at www......com is taking too long to respond." This is the same message for any website. What's weird is that my laptop is connected to the Internet (when I do an ipconfig, I see the IP addresses) and I can stream music using Real Player and WinAmp, download updates for Acrobat and Quicktime (by going to Help --> Check for Updates). I'm at my wit's end and not sure what to do. One option I haven't tried is to do a "system restore" to an earlier date and see if that works. Any other suggestions? thanks Harminder

harminder, for it to start all of a sudden sounds suspect to me. A Trojan maybe? Acting on that assumption may not help, but won't hurt if not. Be aware that a virus and a Trojan are similar, but not the same. Many times, an AV detects one it can't clean , other times, it gets missed entirely. If you need to clean one, Superantispyware can do the job and you can get it free @: http://www.superantispyware.com/ among other places. They have a Vista compatible version if needed. If it turns out that you need to use it, be sure to update prior to running and disable 'restore' so it doesn't get put back. They just released a new update recently and it changes all the time. Things are in a constant state of flux. HTH. Ed in Texas.