Internet drops out randomly but MSN still works

[HarlequinPuppet]

Over the past week my Internet has been dropping out after half an hour to an hour of being connected. I can't access any websites on either Internet Explorer or Firefox but MSN and downloads still continue to work. When I restart my computer it is connected to the Internet again but as this has to be done so frequently it gets very annoying.

I am running Vista but have never had these problems before. The other computers in my house are working fine and even my brother's laptop isn't having these issues even though it's the same model as mine. Does anyone have any ideas of what the problem is and how I could fix it? Thanks in advance.

 

[DelJo63]

I can't access any websites on either Internet Explorer or Firefox but MSN and downloads still continue to work.

Fully describe the IE and FF failures to access AND we must assume a connection to MSN is already established before the first IE or FF failure.

Try this sequence as documentation;

• get a CMD prompt (run->cmd)
• enter nslookup google.com
• run MSN and IE/FF until failure
• rerun nslookup google.com

If (b) retrurns IP addresses and (d) fails, then your DNS has been changed

 

[HarlequinPuppet]

I ran the command prompt and both times it returned the IP addresses for Google but in a different order. Does that matter?

 

[DelJo63]

assuming Both times means before and after, that's good information.

1) that you got addresses means that access to your DNS is not the problem
(at the system level; your browsers could still be hijacked).

2) the order of the reply changing indicates the use of a 'round robin' technique
to load level the work for their DNS servers -- a good thing to see

 

[HarlequinPuppet]

So what do I do next to find out the issue? I have run all my anti-virus and anti-spyware programs and they don't find anything.

 

[DelJo63]

Fully describe the IE and FF failures to access​

please give more details on the failure; timeout, can not display, can not locate page ...

 

[HarlequinPuppet]

The browser stops working and says "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage"

Then when I run the diagnostics test it says-

"www.google.com" is not set up to establish a connection on port "World Wide Web service (HTTP)" with this computer.

Cannot be repaired automatically.

However I am still signed into MSN and can chat to people. If I am downloading anything when the internet browser stops working it will continue to run until complete.

 

[HarlequinPuppet]

So does anyone have any more thoughts on this problem? It is still occurring and is incredibly annoying and stressful while trying to study.

 

[DelJo63]

start this process https://www.techspot.com/community/...lware-removal-preliminary-instructions.58138/

 

[kmg201uk]

Hi,
I had been experiencing the exact same problem as 'HarelquinPuppet'. Having tried everything that has been listed in the replies, and to no avail, I then today discovered that the firewall zonealarm is not compatiable with Vista SP2 that I have installed. This is what I found to be causing my internet connection to dropout.
After installing a different firewall COMODO, I have tested my connection for several hours now without any drop-outs experienced at all!!
Hope this might help you get closer to solving this problem.