a few simple things to try.....

check your network card and see if you have a link light......

open command prompt and see if you can ping local machines and outside addresses.....

Also, let us know if you are on a network, or if this is a home pc, or how you are connected.

If you are on a home network, try unplugging your router or modem to refresh settings. Let us know some more details, and we will look into it.

After not working for 2-3 days it decided to work again. I surely wish Microsoft had been a crummy marketer. Then, perhaps, a better OS would have won out.

Anyway, I have two XP machines, a desktop and a notebook. There is also a notebook that is running Vista. All three are joined in a home network and share printers, scanner, and an external hard drive. The two notebooks are wireless to the router, and the desktop is Ethernet.

While the XP notebook would do nothing on the Internet I used the wired desktop to post my questions; no problem. Before I could try the steps that you and some other fine folks suggested I tried my notebook again, and it was working (scratch head). So there's some more details, but I wouldn't spend any more time looking into it at this point.