Cool, I'm at work now but I'll do another trace when I get home...
Vista does freakin suck! When I first saw it (on SWMBO's parent's computer) I had no freakin idea where anything was! We were using word and couldn't even find print.....had to just hit CTRL + P. Her 13yr old sister had to show us....made me feel old at 22!!
I'll also try and dl the service pack. The tech from Grande (our ISP) is coming out tomorrow but I'm worried thier gonna charge us bc its not going to be a problem w/thier modem. I might just cancel...
Oh, and it's a direct connection....no router
Thanks for all the ideas guys....keep them coming if you can!
To make things more exciting I'll send a 6er out to whoever's suggestion fixes it!
If you are considering switching OS's give Linux a try. Unless you are a gamer there really isn't much any downside to it as most commonly used apps are either available on there or there are other compatible apps that take their place.
You can try it out without any hassle at all, just pick up any number of live CD's out there and boot from them. If it isn't for you just remove the CD, reboot and that is that.
Plus it can be had free of charge (legally) whereas XP Pro is still gonna run you a few dollars.
Admittedly though, the main draw for me at least was the eye candy factor of Compiz. http://compiz.org/
1. Click on Start button.
2. Type Cmd in the Start Search text box.
3. Press Ctrl-Shift-Enter keyboard shortcut to run Command Prompt as Administrator. Allow elevation request.
4. Type netsh int ip reset in the Command Prompt shell, and then press the Enter key.
5. Type netsh winsock reset in the Command Prompt shell, and then press the Enter key.
6. Restart the computer.
In my years of troubleshooting XP, the first command never seemed to help much, but the second one I listed fixed a lot of trouble. Before SP1 was released instead of running that command you had to dig in the registry to accomplish the same thing =P
+1 Ubuntu. Remember how linux used to suck unless you were a masochistic command-line fetishist? Well fun fact, it doesn't anymore. I run it on my desktop. Only thing I ever use Windows for these days is MSPaint (best microsoft product).
OS X is still my favourite OS (converted two years ago), but nobody wants to go sink more into more new equipment when they just bought something. An HBT'er would never do that.
I will just make a couple of suggestions based upon some digging I read about your problem. No matter what your opinion is of Microsoft .....Vista should display the sites mentioned so there is something very wrong in the system files.
Have you tried to connect to the web in Safe Mode?
I would turn off the UAC module in Vista and see if that helps.
If these don't help I would reload the whole system again to a fresh state. It's just faster to reload the whole darn OS.
Vista should connect to the sites mentioned so there is something buggy in the installation.