Sudden problems w/ internet access.

My parents have Cox Cable internet. It comes into the to modem, then goes to a hub that splits it to a computer upstairs (Win2kPro / Win98SE) and one downstairs (WinXP Pro).

On Saturday both stopped getting internet access. Finally on Monday they called Cox and they sent someone out. Well, my mom was the one who was home, and she's pretty much computer illiterate. She said that the guy checked it out and said that it's our computer, not their connection. Well, this doesn't make sense since both PC's crapped out simultaneously.

Anyhow, I came over and messed with it. On the upstair computer I was suprised to see that ZoneAlarm was blocking Internet Explorer! I tried to change it to allow, even removed IE from the list, but it would just pop back up being blocked! So I finally shut down ZA and internet access returned!! :confused:

I went to the PC downstairs, and suddenly it had internet access! :confused:

I yanked ZA from the Startup folder so it wouldn't load [on the upstairs PC]. So I thought I had it temporarily fixed, just hobbling along enough to get on the internet. Then my brother calls and says that he can't get on IE anymore, but MSN Messenger works just fine! He started up ZA just to see what happens and noted that IE was blocked and he could not change it. He shut down ZA, and IE was still not functioning. I haven't even tried to troubleshoot this yet.

Then I was playing on the machine downstairs (IE works fine), and noticed that ftp doesn't work. It gives and "unkown error." About that time Norton A/V popped up and said it was time to update. I said "OK," but it said it couldn't connect to the server! :confused:

What the heck is going on over here? This is really confusing. :confused:

If you and your brother can get online, I'd do online scans for viruses.

Some of the newer viruses that affect Virus and Firewall programs are.....

Win32BugBear@mm

W32.HLLP.Ipamor

so I'd look for something like this first.

==============================================

Links to online scans:

http://www.pandasoftware.com/actives..._principal.htm

http://housecall.antivirus.com/

http://security1.norton.com/ssc/home...OBWYSHSFVIGMKI

I got the downstairs (my) system half-way figured out. If I leave ZA running everything is fine now. This is strange, b/c I haven't actually *done* anything to make it work. :confused:

The upstairs system is still hosed. I was gonna try to work on it last night but it was in one of its moods. Sometimes it will just freeze on bootup every time you try. Wait a day and it's fine. So I guess I'll see how it acts tonight. *shrugs* -tim

If you mean it wasn't "getting internet" because 'the page cannot be displayed' was showing up in IE, it may not have been your computer. If there was any sort of network problems on the internet, something completely independent from Cox, it could still cause a problem. You could try going ot multiple websites, do a trace route to see if its hanging up there or anything or try using IP addresses in case a problem is with name resolution.

Well, we traced it to ZoneAlarm on the Win2k box. Somehow it suddenly started blocking IE and would not change. So I uninstalled and reinstalled w/ no luck. I finally just uninstalled it and left it.

On the downstairs computer the internet just suddenly worked. I can't really explain it. :confused:

Anyhow, I've know for a while that using a hub is supposedly bad, so I guess I'll finally get a router w/ a firewall and be done with it. :) Thanks for the help. -tew