Problem solved! As suspected by most of you in this thread, winsock was not the problem. In fact, nothing related to my computer was the problem. The problem was a malfunctioning “pair” up the street. Rerouting us to a different pair solved it immediately and we are now back online with full browsing ability.
Thank god. I felt like I was detached from my brain.
Thanks to everybody in this thread for advice and general support. It helped a lot to be able to tell the tech that I’d already done a bunch of troubleshooting stuff (it kept it from being a 5-hour tech support call, for one thing).
It’s a pain to not have access now a days. It’s worse when you have no idea that it is going to be gone for a while and you need to get an email or find information about something.
:smack: D’oh! That’ll teach me to try to do tech. support with a belly full of gin and tonics! (or more likely, it won’t…)
Anyways, glad to hear you’re back with us, MsWhatsit!
I’m surprised the guy had you ping MSN and CNN… both of them (as well as many other sites) have ICMP turned off; so the will not respond to ping requests. Huh.