Do any of your other internet programs (instant messengers, email client, etc) work?

You might want to try a more comprehensive set of scans. Microsoft AS and Norton won't catch everything (actually, there is much that both of those miss). Go to the link at the bottom of my sig and run through the first two steps. This will perform a very thorough scan of your system and will find almost any problem software that could be on your computer.

Sorry, I did not mention that I can succesfully PING sites like google.com and IPCONFIG shows a valid IP address. I'm pretty sure something is blocking IE from displaying web pages. Wonder what... And MS Antispyware did not even detect one spyware/adware. I've also used the IE Fix utility. No go. Also optimized IE. Still no go.

Sam.

I guess I could always use this opportunity to plug my favorite browser, Firefox. Try installing and running a different browser and see if you get different results.

Did you try going to that guide I talked about?