I have a weather bug program that seems to be updating the temperatures but I cannot access it for any other purposes (in fact at this moment it says in large letters at the bottom of the screen "to recieve live weather data, an active Internet connection is required.")

Re:another browser, funny you should mention that because last night I visited mozilla, downloaded firefox, and put it on a CD. It installed in the affected computer no problem and is now on the desk top, but then when I try to open it I get an error message "firefox.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close."

Re: spyware, I ran Norton 2004, Adaware, and Spyware protection from AOL. Would they possibly miss something that Spybot will potentially pick up?

ugh i have gotten that error with fire fox as well. just re install it. if it continues try netscape or maybe opera. there are a ton of browsers that work very well.

Um... the free versions of WeatherBug are adware. Depending on exactly which version you have, it may also have installed other programs of more-than-questionable reputation on your computer.

Arikay,

Could you answer a couple of my pervious questions in more detail please?:

1. Was that when you pinged Google by using "www.google.com", or by pinging "66.102.7.147"?

2. The IP address of your own computer's network card failed? Given that you said above that you could ping Google, that doesn't make sense.

I got four responses when I pinged google and when I pinged 66.102.7.147
When I pinged my IP address (192.168.2.67) I got 4 "request timed out" messages followed by a 100% loss message.
Basic question: what am I actually demonstrating by pinging this addresses? That the computer is communicating with them? If I pinged the IP address from another computer in my home (working through the same router) would the response I get be of any value?
Also, re: what you said about weather bug, I might be best advised to disable it, if not uninstall it altogether (it came as part of the "free" software already installed in the computer)

Arikay, you know how most people check a hijackthis logfile? They look for entries that are unknown to them, and then they use google. (This method is getting more and more difficult, since a lot of hijackthis logfiles are flooding the forums, producing irrelevant search hits) It's quite some work, especially with a mile-long log like this, but why don't you do that? You could learn a lot.

I see a lot of junk on your machine, different search bars etc. Your Anti-Adware Programm is no good, which one did you try? Use Spybot Search&Destroy for a start.

Then start to think about the way you surf the internet. Don't believe Billy Gates that IE is the best browser of all - there are others, with which you probably wouldn't have those problems.

And yes, get rid of that weatherbug-program.




Michael

Thank you Michael, I am in the process of doing those very things, e.g. I installed Spybot and found no less than 69 pieces of garbage that I promptly deleted, though I have still not solved the access problem, but by so doing who knows how many other problems I may be solving in the interim!

I'll gladly take any other suggestions.

Thanks

It's weird that you cannot ping your own IP. Is there a desktop firewall on your computer that denies echo requests?

You can ping the internet though, which means that you should try to reinstall Firefox. If you still get an error, try Mozilla. If that doesn't work either, then your PC is messed up.

BTW: you don't have any proxy settings in your internet options, do you? (Start->System Configuration->Internet Options->Connections->Settings). I hope these directions are ok since my OS is not in english.



Michael

At some level, yes- you are demonstating that the computer which you are pinging is at least alive and reachable. The PING command uses a (fairly low-level) network communication protocol called ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol). When you send a ping command to a certain machine, the request sent is essentially a single packet containing the message: "Hello machine, are you there?". If the target computer is online (and ICMP requests are not blocked by a firewall), the target machine should respond with a single packet basically containing the response: "Yes, I'm here".

As you can gather from the above, a ping only verifies that the target computer is running; it says nothing about the functionality of higher-level protocols such as those used by web browser, email programs, etc. (HTTP, SMTP, etc.)


It very well might; please try that and let us know the results.


Yes- weird indeed; not sure about that one...


Arikay,

Just FYI: we don't deal with HijackThis logs in any forum other than our Viruses, Spyware, and other Nasties forum; any/all HJT logs should be posted in that forum. However, this particular entry in your log is of concern:

O10 - Broken Internet access because of LSP provider 'connwsp.dll' missing

Although your log does not indicate as much activity by "malicious unwanted guests" as pcschrottie's response might lead you to believe (no offense meant there, pcschrottie), there are a few other things in your log which need to be fixed as well. In light of that, I'm going to split your above post containing your HJT log into its own thread in the proper forum. I will include a link back to this thread for reference.

The new thread concerning your HJT log is here:

http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforum...2077#post92077

Please post your responses concerning the log and any other questions that you might have about spyware in general in that thread.

Thanks.

Sorry about the misplaced hijack post.

Re: other items, I got the same result, 100% lost, when I pinged the computer in question from another PC.
I do not think so but I will try as you suggest.

I will give this a try as well.

There is a firewall. I do not know about denying echo request--let's just say I have not gotten any onscreen message saying access was denied when I tried the operation, but I will investigate this just the same--I assume it would, if present, be in my firewall settings.

Which brand(s) of firewall product(s)?

Before trying anything else, entirely disable any and all firewalling software; it may be actually be the root of your problems, and at the very least it will interfere with our troubleshooting procedures.