So, I was on my gaming computer yesterday, I was using some applications like Steam, xfire, Counter-strike etc.. If any of you are familiar with steam you'll know there is an in-game community page where you can see your groups/friends and other info about your personal steam profile by press alt+tab. Well anyway, I was in game and needed to view that page, I tried opening it and it was loading really slow, until is gave me "This program cannot display the webpage".

Here is a screenshot of the exact message it gave me.

http://i34.tinypic.com/65sxp3.jpg

Later I found out that absolutely ALL programs besides my interenet browsers, (Opera, firefox, IE) APPEARED to be blocked from displaying web based pages.

For example, steam won't load my community page inside the client, Veoh (steaming video app) won't load any videos, xfire doesn't load the banner ads at the top.

BUT remember I can still ACCESS the internet with these apps, Just none of them will render what appears to be web based code like

HTML, flash etc.. WITHIN non-browser applications only. I can still use web browsers fine.

Things I've tried....

disabling my firewall & checking if the programs were allowed
disabling my anti-virus
Restarting my router
repairing my internet connection.

I am running Windows XP Home Edition version 2002 Service Pack 3.

Any advice? I am so frustrated trying to figure this out.

EDIT: If it's any help I also found out all of my internet browsers are running under a proxy that I DIDN'T set. I'm not sure if adware could be responsible or what.

It says it's using "local host" as the name address when I check me ip. Did you try System Restore?I did not, I think i'll give that a shot and report back.

Thanks for the suggestion. We'll be here Quote from: Broni on November 27, 2008, 07:40:23 PM

Did you try System Restore?

Try from Safe Mode.

Download HijackThis:
http://www.trendsecure.com/portal/en-US/tools/security_tools/hijackthis/download
Click on Download HijackThis Installer
Post HijackTHis log.