What's Killing My Browsers

Ran the MS patches on my desktop last Tuesday night and IE 7 couldn't connect to the Internet afterwards. Did not run them on my laptop so I've still got a browser. Checked FTP, email, ping, etc. - they all work fine, plus my laptop and desktop are both on the same home network so I know http traffic isn't getting blocked there.

Did some Googling, but have been very busy, so didn't pursue it, just used my laptop. Then, remembered I had Firefox installed. Brought it up, made it my default browser and was back in business. Again, figured I would get IE fixed later.

Had to reboot after installing a new network printer and now Firefox wanted to update. I'm not a suspicious guy, so I said go ahead. Afterwards, it's dead, too. Both browsers show a page indicating they can't find the requested page. The MS page offers a diagnostic which, when run, says "no problemo - maybe you mistyped."

Anybody see anything?

Usual data: XP Pro SP2, Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0.0.125.

 

Beat you to it by a few seconds. I had the firewall turned off, so it didn't ask me to approve the "changed application". However, it just blocked it! An odd bit of logic.

As soon as I turned the firewall back on and reloaded IE, it asked me, I said "allow" and life is good again. (Firefox, ditto.)

Thanks for your speedy reply!