Cousin Pete’s X61 Tablet — a nice ThinkPad he bought off my employee purchase plan discount a year ago — is acting wicked weird. I have an internet connection: verified with Ping. iTunes can browse the iTunes store. Outlook can send and receive mail. But neither FireFox nor Internet Explorer can open a website.
Maddening. I suspect either a recent Microsoft system update or Norton Antivirus is behind the glitch. Trying to deduce the issue — e.g. not performing an amputation when a band-aid is all that is needed — while trying to have a semblance of a Sunday afternoon. Pete brought over some ribs from his smoker, so that buys some time.
Update: It was Norton. So uninstalled that, swapped in free AVG. All is well.
Enjoy the ribe, and try disabling the firewall. That usually works for me.
Look for software grabbing port 80 for itself. I’d also consider system restore to a knoen good point, then think about what was installed in the interim.
Gotta love Norton. I suggest NOD32 by Eset. Low resource utilization, hyper-fast disk scanning, and top-rated in detection.