Weird problems with internet

This is a novel...please bare with me because I am at wits end on this:

Okay...My internet is really acting very strange lately. It works kind of sorta. I can access a page like Yahoo.com for instance, but whenever I try to click a link on that page I get an error message saying page cannot be displayed. In most cases pages and sites cannot be loaded at all, but with some sites like wikipedia.com I can traverse freely through all links without a problem.
I have tried with both Firefox2 and IE7 with the same results for both.

I know it is something on this particular machine because I plugged my sisters laptop up to this same modem and it loads all pages fine on her machine particularly ones that I could not load shortly before and after.

I have tried a system restore. Full virus and spyware scans(ESET NOD32 and Spyware Doctor) do not help. I have tried loading in safe mode and still the problem exists. I have tried the Winsock and LSP fixes. Nothing.

I am running Windows XP Home SP3 P4 1.1 GB RAM directly connected to the modem.

I went out of town this past weekend and before I left Saturday morning everything worked fine. I shutdown the cpu for the weekend and when I returned I noticed the problem immediately upon reboot. No storms or weather occurences and no chance anyone was on my machine over the weekend.

I am sorry if I did not meet protocol on some forum rules. I really am, but please someone give me any kind of advice on this. I hope I have over done it on this and am looking passed the obvious. Thanks all!

 

Also, all firewalls have been disabled

 

Could this possibly be the NIC going bad?

 

Just to rule out Virtumonde spyware which gave me internet problems similar to yours check Start>Run>type in msconfig > under the Startup tab is there a listing for anything weird like random letters .exe? For example pnmyeui.exe

Because you still had the problem in safe mode this is probably not applicable to your problem but since the symptoms are so similar it might be worth checking.

 

Thanks for the advice. It turned out to be the NIC. I installed a dynex this afternoon just to test and that indeed solved the problem. Thanks to all who viewed and had no advice. I hope this can help someone with a similar problem in the future.