Browsers Cannot Access Any Website on Vista

[wiskic10_4]

Hey AO,

Oh man... what an evening...

I've just spent 4 hours trying to get the browsers on a Vista machine to access the Internet - to no avail. I finally had the client back up her data and left her to do an HP System Recovery. (that's how I roll - - I'm going back tomorrow to check up)

Here's the deal - she had previously had some malware or a virus that had removed her Norton System Security icon and was causing browser redirects. She managed to get rid of it using Spybot S&D and then Malwarebyte's. But days later she was unable to access the web. She has another computer on the network that has no problems.

Here are the things I tried:

Ran rkill, then Malwarebytes' Antimalware in Safe Mode with Networking which found nothing. Then I ran HijackThis and removed a couple of leftover malicious looking entries that had (file missing). Then I ran combofix - it took about 15 minutes, and it removed some things - I looked at the log, and it looked good to me.

I was still unable to access the web in Safe Mode with Networking or in Normal Mode. However, I had a router-assigned IP address, I could ping google.com, and my Malwarebyte's was able to download updates. It was also able to get Windows updates and she could check her email using Outlook. I ran SUPERAntispyware to see if Malwarebytes had missed anything, but it came back clean.

So I installed a new browser (Opera) - same results.

Then I uninstalled everything from Norton/Symantec (which took some work - I finally had to delete some registry entries that would allow me to delete the folder - the uninstaller would die at the last second - because it couldn't access the internet. )

I went to her network adapter properties, and uninstalled/reinstalled all of the connection items. No difference.

I downloaded and ran several fixes for winsock, lps, etc. And I entered the command prompt and did netsh winsock reset and several other commands I don't recollect ATM.

I checked the hosts file and related files. Nothing.

I reinstalled her wireless adapter. I tried a new wireless adapter, and I tried resetting the router. Nothing.

I ran CCleaner, disabled *everything* in startup via msconfig except Microsoft processes.

After four hours, I had to give in and go for the reinstall (what happened to my 45 minute rule!? )

Can any of you gurus think of something else I could have or should have tried?