Strange vista problem

[misterjingo]

Hi all,

I've been running Vista Ultimate 64 with no problems for the past year. Tonight something very strange has happened. Suddenly, IE7 will not connect to any webpages (it says it cannot display the webpage). Firefox works as before, I can also ping any site, but for i'm guessing the same reason, sidebar gadgets which connect to the net have all been unable to gain access too, neither has MSN messenger. It seems microsoft based software suddenly has no net access. I've checked and all non-MS IM software still works.
This is not a virus, malware, firewall, or network issue, as I've checked and double checked all of those avenues.
Is there some shared service which might of gone crazy which could account for this? ANy help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[misterjingo]

hmmm, just after posting I have resolved the issue. It seemed that for some reason, ie was defaulting to weird proxy settings and some of the other security settings were altered. Not really sure how any of this could have happened.
Sorry about this.

 

[Amp34]

I get this every so often (although not very often nowadays), it usually sorts itself after I hit the "repair" then "renew IP address" button.