I hope that someone can bring some light to the issue I have. It is regarding the broadband internet that I and my sister are using. Just to note that they are both separate CONNECTIONS in to separate places.

With my computer I have a year old Sony Vaio running on Windows XP Home and using Norton’s 2007 antivirus and using a netgear router. Simply when using the internet it appears that I am CONNECTED but cannot USE any function on the internet. I.e. loading internet explorer, when it opens up the page cannot be displayed, comes up. So after investigating on the msn troubleshooting page, I have discovered that when this occurs it is the DNS and Key ports that are not working. (I am not sure what this is but it occurs). I can fix 99% of the time. If I am on msn and it occurs I normally try and repair, let a report be sent then but clicking don’t SEND. Then disconnecting of the internet and reconnecting. But if it occurs whilst using internet explorer by itself then I have to turn the computer off and the router, reset the router and then turn the laptop on and that normally works. Why does this occur and can it be sorted.

The other issue is that yesterday it started to happen to my sister’s laptop which is brand new. That is a Sony Vaio also using the Vista operating system, Norton 360 antivirus but she is on a university LAN network.

I really do not know why this is happening and what to do about it, as sometimes this occurs when I least want it to and it is unpredictable.
It seems LIKE a virus/spyware infected both computers.