Question by Ben C: I can’t download anything when conected to the internet… PLEASE HELP!?
I apologise in advance for how long this is…but it’s all relevant! I Promise!

This is becoming increasingly frustrating now! and I am desperate for some help…

We have two computers running in my house, one is my desktop and the other is my Girlfriend’s laptop… My desktop computer is connected to our router via ethernet cable and my girlfriend connects via wireless…

We have had this set-up running Absolutely fine for the passed six months, with very little connection problems…

About 3 days ago, my girlfriend was using her laptop, chatting to friends on MSN Messenger when all of a sudden she was signed-out from Messenger automatically… Obviously she assumed that there had been a connection disruption and she attempted to sign back in…Almost immediatley it come-up with the following error message:

“Could not connected to the server, Please make sure you are connected to the internet – error code ???????”

Now, with me standing over her shoulder, I got her to verify that she was connected to the internet, firstly by checking the wireless connection status, which was “connected” and then the signal strength which was “100%” and finally, I got her to launch her browser and do a Google Search…which returned results immediatley… so no internet connection problems! Right!?!

Ok, so then I decide to fire-up my desktop (plugged-in to the same router via ethernet cable) – and I launched Messenger… it signed-in with no problems and I was able to chat away etc…

I went back onto my girlfriends laptop and tried to sign-in to her messenger again…same error message, same error code! – There was a link to “Check Server Status” which I clciked-on and it took me to the MSN website where it was clear that all servers were operational!

I told my girlfriend to reset her laptop and try it again… same problem. it was getting very quite by this point, so we decided to give-in and go to bed, hoping that it would solve itself over night…. Wrong!

The next day, I get in from work switch her laptop on, check that it is connected to the internet and then run messenger again…I get the same message, same error code. – Now what?

I noticed that there was a pop-up in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen saying that “new updates are available” for windows… so I thought I’d try installing them and see if that solved the problem… I clicked on the link and almost immediatley, I got an error message saying that it couldn’t connect to the server! Weird Huh?

Sounds like spyware to me! – So I ran Spybot and then AVG (Full Version) – they both found a few Adware files each (which I removed)… but nothing serious was flagged-up! – Then relised that I hadn’t updated SpyBot…so I clicked the button to “check for updates” – I get an error message – “Unable to connect to the server”

Getting very angry by this point… I decided to visit the SpyBot and AVG websites… to my horror I got the classic “Server Not found” broswer message… you know, then that prompts you to check you’ve typed in the address properley etc..

This getting very spooky now!.. I checked a few other websites…Facebook works fine, as does Amazon, Ebay, Twitter, BBC etc..

However, I was blocked from accessing any website which contained a downloadable .exe file… i.e. MSN, AVG, SpyBot, Adobe…even things like the flickr uploader page was blocked! (all of which worked fine on my desktop, just not on the laptop)

So it could be the firewall and/or other router settings was my next thought… I logged into the router Admin page (via my desktop PC) and checked to make sure that there was nothing out of place i.e. Firewall, Application Sharing assignments etc… as I expected, all was fine! – Then went back to the laptop (which I was ready throw out of the window by this point) and disabled Windows Firewall… and attempted to access the sites again…no luck!

Finally, I connected the laptop to the router via the ethernet cable and ran my tests again…same problem across all sites and applications…

This tells me that it must be an issue that is to do with the laptop itself… doesn’t it?? – if so, what!?!?!

I’ve reset the router multiple times, aswell as the laptop and still go nowhere!

PLEASE HELP ME, IF YOU CAN! – Very Much Appreciated!

Thank you!

Best answer:

Answer by Dung del camello
Hm its highly likely that you have a virus that prevents you from accessing certain servers, like for example the windows update server. And also prevents you from downloading .exe files. This is most likely to protect itself.

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