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Date: | Mon, 7 May 2012 01:45:05 +1000 |
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Dave wrote:
<<Neither IE (reloaded with the OS, which means it's not up to date) nor
Firefox (11.0, downloaded about 2 weeks ago) can ever connect to a web page>>
1. You didn't mention firewall settings--have you checked these, or tried
disabling the firewall temporarily?
2. Try turning both the W7 and a-v updates off---just maybe one of these is
taking priority while searching for its server, and causing any other
traffic to timeout (which will result in that IE message). Unlikely, but
not beyond the realms of possibility.
3. Much more likely---you mention that you only "restored" the OS
partition. Did you reformat first? And does this imply that there are
other partitions or drives in the system which you have not
reformatted? If so, the following comments may be relevant.
Not long ago, I inserted my USB flash drive into a computer which
subsequently turned out to be badly infected by viruses and malware. At
that point, nothing appeared to happen.
But when I later inserted that flash drive into my own computer, Avira
instantly went absolutely berserk, screaming out that every .exe file on
that flash drive was infected by a certain virus. There is a certain class
of viruses which can invisibly jump from one partition or any other drive
in the system onto any other partition or drive.
Unless you have reformatted ALL other partitions/drives in your system, is
it possible that this could have happened, and that there are remnants of
the original virus either remaining in your OS partition or which might
have leapt across from other partitions/drives? This could conceivably
have the effect of blocking your internet access and/or preventing security
updates. If it's a recent virus, your a-v would probably not detect it
until its updates have been installed. I wouldn't have any faith in any a-v
software which let that virus in in the first place.
Hopefully you will find a simpler solution to your problem, and it may well
be simply a W7 setting somewhere applicable to your modem. But the fact
that updates appear to be blocked makes me very suspicious of some sort of
malware activity.
Don Penlington
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