Cannot find server, page cannot be displayed

Hey there!

Have a new Dell 8400 with XP Home Edition. I unboxed it, plugged it in and immediately installed Norton Systemworks, Personal Firewall, Ad-Aware SE, and Spybot and ran updates for all until I got "no updates" message. I have it networked through a Linkys router with a Win98 machine. I have Windows Firewall turned off. I'm using both IE and NS 7.2 and both display the same symptoms. Internet Options on the Win98 machine is much more restrictive than the XP (set to defaults). I have no problem accessing websites with the Win98 machine, but with the XP I can't connect to places like hp.com or veritas.com, sites that I wouldn't expect to have a problem. From the Symantec website, I can't go from a search to a knowledgebase article. NS 7.2 just doesn't do anything, IE gives me a "cannot find server, page cannot be displayed" error. I've looked at my Hosts files and see nothing wrong and have even tried moving the Hosts files to my desktop with no difference.

I've done scans from several websites as outlined in a MS forum. I have read and applied all of the steps outlined in the How to: Spyware, Trojan and Virus Removal article, step by step, without skipping anything (took me 3.5 hours). None of the scans found anything.

This is driving me crazy....

Suggestions?

Thanks,
Kenny