[Gaylebean]

My dad has a new sony viao computer which runs Vista home premium. He's using a Belkin wireless G router to access the internet. For some reason, the computer will not access anything related to microsoft over the internet.

I can't get access to the microsoft website or my hotmail account even though there's no problem accessing most other websites (msn groups can be accessed but very slowly in comparison to similar websites). Some non-microsoft related websites e.g. odeon.co.uk, are also unavailable. Windows media center times out when I try testing the always on internet connection in setup. Automatic updates cannot access any security updates let alone download and install them.

The computer did come with Norton 360 3-month trial but that has expired and I have removed it. He's currently using Symantec Antivirus but I don't think it includes a firewall. Windows firewall is turned off.

I've tried accessing the microsoft and hotmail websites with my psp through the network and those connections also failed so I'm assuming it's something to do with the router but I'm at a complete loss.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated

[lunarlander]

Hi ,

It may be a DNS problem. In your router, under Internet WAN / DNS try using these two OpenDNS addresses : 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220 ( copy down what is there before first ) and see if the problem persists.

[Gaylebean]

Thanks for the suggestion, unfortunately, the problem still persists. The router is usually set up to get the DNS automatically.

[DoubleHelix]

Determine if the router is the problem by connecting the computer(s) directly to the modem. If there's no problem, then reset the router and reconfigure it.

[Gaylebean]

The wireless router is also the modem but I did manage, after a few hours, to get an old zoom USB modem to connect to the internet briefly. That had no problems accessing microsoft but after I'd installed widows updates and restarted, I could no longer connect to the internet and when I tried to go back to the router, I couldn't even access the web based configuration page.

In the end, I had to perform a system restore to 24 hrs previously in order to get back online. I reset the router to its factory settings and just set it up to access the internet, but it made no difference.

One thing I did notice is that the Vaio Smart Network application was fully functional when I managed to access the microsoft website, but it no longer works. I don't think it was running before I managed to get the zoom modem to work. I'm wondering if there's a setting in there that's causing the problem but I can't get the application to run.

I've tried removing all network and internet connections in order to set one up from scratch using either the router or usb modem but the Smart Network application never seems to load.