If you have ZoneAlarm Internet Security, Pro, Antivirus, Anti-Spyware, or Basic Firewall installed on your computer then the Microsoft Update KB951748 which was released around July 9th (thats when my computers started having this problem.) will have changed something with the DNS and made ZoneAlarm Firewall shutdown the internet to your computer (all except for pings) when set to "High", to fix this you should download the update for your piece of software.
http://download.zonealarm.com/bin/free/pressReleases/2008/LossOfInternetAccessIssue.htmlI hope this helps someone. It took me two days to find that I had to do this to fix the problem, I had tried everything: bypassing my hardware firewall, checking all network settings, scanning for viruses/adware/malware/spyware, even contacting my ISP (

) and then my brother suggested I try disabling the software firewall, his logic was "If you can't access the internet then malicious software shouldn't be able to access you." so I took the gamble and lowered my security and I was rewarded by finding that it worked so I did a quick google search and found that I had a few options to fix this problem. I could remove the patch OR I could leave my security at "Medium" OR I could download and install the update from ZoneAlarm, I chose to download and install the update and it worked perfectly.
Has anyone else been affected by this Microsoft Patch?
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SOTW Judge (Sep 14, 2005 1:38 pm - Feb 06, 2009 8:58 pm)