Is this a malware issue?

Hi,
I have an old Dell Inspiron E1505 with Windows XP and Linux.
Everything worked fine for a long time until one day Windows XP was not able to connect.
To my surprise when I booted Linux (Gentoo) connection was established.

Now, because I'm tired of rebooting back and force I finally decided to try and fix it.

Now, does this sounds like a malware problem? It's not a hardware issue since the connection from Linux is fine and stable...

Thank you.

 

TimW,
More info:
I can successfully ping and I just updated the Spybot S&D from one of its mirrors.
But running IE (version 6.0) gives "The page cannot be displayed".
Upon IE start-up I see "Connecting to 127.0.0.1" in the status bar and then the page above shows up.

You still wants me to do "R&R"?

Thank you.

 

Hi,
In both "Address Bar" and "Tools->Internet Options->General->Home Page->Address" I see "http://my.earthlink.net". Changing it to read "www.yahoo.com" didn't solve it. It still tries to use 127.0.0.1 (which IS my own machine AKA "loop interface").
I can try to download Chrome/FF and install one of them on this machine.
Problem is I have a software that relies on the working IE and that's why I need it to work. As soon as it starts recognizing the presence of a web I will try to upgrade an IE.

Thank you.

 

OK, never mind. False alarm. I made it work.
All I did was "Tool->Internet Options->Connections->LAN Settings" and un-check "Use a proxy server for you LAN".
And now it is time to update Windows... ;-)

Thank you for the help and support.