Had to resort to fdisk and full reinstall, after which computer works fine.
Thank you for your help, it did appear to be a residual driver blocking internet.

UPDATE:
It seems to work in safe mode with networking, but not in normal boot. is there a dead driver left by spyware blocking access? if so how on earth do i find it?

ran netsh and rebooted things, netstat gives no numbers at all, the comp is at my house now, and even though i manually inputted the network details and it thinks its on the network no internet...

I am trying to fix a computer belonging to someone who has suffered brain injury. This unfortunately means that he is prone to clicking on the popups that have been coming up in firefox (your...