Cannot connect to google.com

I'm at wit's end, I seem to have gotten into something mama can't fix. Windows XP SP3 Home Edition, I cannot connect to google.com with any browser (FF,Chrome,IE8.) I can connect to maps.google.com but not google.com or any suffix there after. I can ping google.com with nothing lost, 4 sent, 4 received. It has to be simple, but imma not simple, or I'm too simple.

Thanks for the help in advance.

 

I know y'all have a host of things to do so I will figure something out. Thanks. Would delete but can't find the delete thread option.

 

Have you gone through the malware removal steps posted here?
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407 (read first)
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=139313 (xp specific steps)

That is always a good first step. This would include going through your installed applications and looking to see if you have something like a toolbar installed that could be preventing your connections.

As some more general advice, I always suggest having your operation system and applications on a partition or drive by itself. After you make a clean install, you can take an image of the os/apps partition and then easily restore it if there is a problem. In your case, you could take a new image of your system as it is right now and then restore to your last good image. If that solved the problem, you are done in about 5 minutes. If the problem isn't fixed, you can just revert back to the image you just took and no harm done.

Even if you find and remove malware, you can be left wondering if you got it all and if there is any left over damage. Images are much more reliable in that regard.

LMHmedchem