I had similar problems to yours Senior P. though I am on a Windows machine, using ADSL2 and a router. Huge amount of trouble shooting by Telstra/Bigpond etc. and it turned out to be excessive 'noise' coming from a set top box that my next door neighbour had for a huge satellite dish antenna he had bought to receive up to 32 non English speaking programmes! As soon as the box was off everything back to normal. Maybe a piece of electrical equipment near you comes into play around 11.00 and 23.00?

Sorry LateArrival, can't help.

pb,

Thanks: I'll follow that up, as I did check stuff around the house such as portable phone frequencies, etc. There's a bit of development going on nearby with new houses, goodness knows how I can check them all!

Like BOAC, I can use the full Outlook client (not Outlook Express) as a browser. It is not clear how independent it is of IE - certainly in my case I find that the browsing history in Outlook is identical to the copy of IE7 I occasionally use for testing. But it is a different executable, so that may explain why it has not been crippled alongside IE and Firefox.

The fact that this behaviour started for the OP on a network other than his own (possibly with no firewall), targeted web browsers to the extent that he can selectively no longer navigate to their websites while other sites (like PPRuNe) are accessible (albeit using a mail client as a browser), makes me think MalWare.

LateArrival - until you can get the PC disinfected (or worst case, rebuilt), I would strongly recommend that you don't connect to the internet, and certainly don't conduct any online transactions, banking etc.

The full link to Malwarebytes is Malwarebytes - you could try entering that (cut and paste) into the address bar of your mail client, rather than clicking on the link.

If you can get to it and download and run it, that should help. If the site is blocked, then it would tend to confirm it's a malware problem.

SD

Before I logged onto PPRuNe this morning and saw BOAC's and Saab Dastard's cautionary posts, I tried System Restore (have used it a few times over the years but didn't think to try it this time.)

It worked!And since I hadn't installed anything on my computer since the restore date I chose, I didn't lose anything. I would still like to know what caused the problem in the first place (I did run virus and malware scans as soon as the issue started) but I'm glad it seems to be resolved. So, thank you to LastCall and everyone else who contributed to this thread.

Since I have been throwing my computer issues into this forum I have always been grateful for the advice and information I've received...a great spirit of generosity here. It's such a valuable resource and one I appreciate very much.

Latearrival

Brilliant! Yes, I too have received enormous assistance here.

Don't forget to run an updated Malwarebytes scan just in case! System restore is excellent at also restoring a virus if it was present at the chosen restore date.

Latearrival,

I'm delighted that you have got back to a working state, but I still recommend that you exercise caution on the wifi network you are visiting.

At least run the Windows firewall, and preferably download something better, like ZoneAlarm.

Otherwise it may happen again!

SD