Suddenly lost Internet connection

I live in a hotel most of the time and use their ethernet (sbcglobal.net). For the past several weeks I have noticed Zone Alarm was stopping an attempt to access a website every time I hit the print button, and I do a lot of printing. I also use Norton Anti-Virus and, as time permits, I have tried various spyware, adaware, malware tools to see if they could figure out why the computer was trying to access that website. The website does seem to collect usage data for their clients, so I should figure out what's up with that.

Yesterday afternoon I was happily surfing along and read somewhere about a new malware tool called Eweido (sp?). I read some reviews (all glowing) and downloaded the trial version. In a couple minutes I let it fly. While Eweido was running I took a look at the programs list in Zone Alarm to see if there was something obvious in there. I can only say that I played around - I changed the Internet access for a couple of the system programs, but I can't remember which ones or whether I changed them back. After Eweido was finished, it had found over 12,000 items of malware that the other programs had overlooked. They had names like Fastclick, Doubleclick, and other well known malware companies, so I let Eweido quarantine them all. When I rebooted I had no Internet connectivity.

Since then I have read what seems to be the pertinent messages here on this board. Those include

http://forum.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=85832
and
http://forum.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=85061

I think I have run the entire drill. I have

1. Checked the network connections, disabled and enabled them both (wireless and local area).
2. Checked with the hotel to see if their systems are all working (they are)
3. Checked with other guests to see if their computers are accessing the Internet okay (they are, in fact I'm using the hotel's guest services computer now).
4. Tested my computer using an ethernet outlet in another room (nothing).
5. Tested my computer using a different ethernet cable (in another room) (no luck).
6. Tested my computer using the hotel's wireless router (I can connect to the router using IE but cannot get to the Internet).
7. Uninstalled, reinstalled, and turned off Zone Alarms
8. Turned off Norton.
9. Uninstalled and reinstalled all the clients and services.
10. Uninstalled, reinstalled, and turned off Eweido.
11. Checked the network parameters in Device Manager (no IRQ or ghosts)
12. Verified the network settings.
13. Checked the socket layers, skipped checking the winsock, and refreshed the TCP/IP stack. I did not run LSP because of the Ad-Aware note.
14. I have pinged the outside world and get fast replies.

Is that all you got for troubleshooting? I might add that I tested the Internet connectivity at each step of uninstalling and reinstalling everything just to see if something kicked loose. I have also looked at Eweido to see if I could restore the quarantined files. If you can do that, I haven't figured out how. Eweido is made in Germany so tech support is not easy.

Am I at the point of reloading XP (which came preloaded and I don't have any disks from which to reload)? All I can think at this point is some dll somewhere is corrupt. Finding one corrupt file in an ocean of those things seems like playing the lottery.

I am fully backed up for data and programs, so I'm not worried about losing anything, but I hate the idea of taking the nuclear option. Starting all the way over from ground zero to get everything just right - that just takes weeks.

My computer is a HP Pavilion notebook, XP Home with SP2 and all the updates until yesterday, 3 GHZ, 1G RAM, 60G HD. I don't play games or load it up with really out-there stuff. My business allows me to work from a hotel BUT I need the Internet to work.

 

I'm back and viewing this on my laptop from my room. Here's what I've done since yesterday.

1. Booted in Safe Mode and tried to connect with Firefox (no luck)
2. Continued in the Safe Mode and tried to connect with IE (LUCK!!)
3. Renewed the Firefox window and it connected!!
4. Opened Thunderbird for email and it connected!!!
5. Shut down and rebooted normally and it would not connect again.
6. Rebooted in the Safe Mode and everything came back but only in the order I mentioned above (IE first, then Firefox, then Thunderbird)
7. Continuing in the Safe Mode I deleted the following software programs
   • HijackThis
   • Adaware SE
   • Ewido
8. Rebooted in normal mode - again, Firefox would not connect by itself. I launched IE and it connected after hitting the Reload button. Then Firefox reloaded and Thunderbird connects.

So I think I can manage for now. At least I can get yesterday's work done and some of today's. If anyone knows what happened, I'm still very interested to avoid that problem again. Now I need to restart Zone Alarm and Norton and see what happens.

Oops! Just to keep me honest, when I previewed this message Firefox timed out, so maybe all is not perfect.

 

I'm still running but my Internet connection is very intermittent - more off than on. I need to reformulate a question and post again.

 

Okay I must close the loop. The solution to my problem was...drum roll please...the hotel's router. Today we woke up to intermittent service all over the hotel. The replacement router seems to have solved everyone's problems.