IE crashes, Firefox can't connect to the net

Hello everybody, I am trying to help out a friend with his laptop. At first, it was infected by spyware, and I had that issue fixed. Now, I still cannot access the internet. If I try it with the Microsoft Internet Explorer the laptop shows a blue error screen and crashes, followed by an automatic restart. I also reinstalled the drivers for the network adapter and all this is working. I have an excellent connection strength and so on, it just does not open a website. There are no hardware issues either. I also cannot connect to the internet with any other program. I tried installing Firefox, which helped in so far, that it no longer crashed the laptop, but still, I cannot open a website. When I tried to go to a website with Firefox, the following error message appeared: Network Connection. Error 623: The system could not find the phone book entry for this connection. Moreover, when I went into properties for the wireless network connection, the tag, that has all the IP and such information, only showed "unavailable". There was no IP address, nothing. I think there the IE6 is on the laptop or an earlier version. I also ran WinSock XP Fix 1.2. Still, nothing connects to the internet. I am really frustrated here. Thanks for any input! crASHed

Hi, Sorry to hear about the wireless problem. Some first steps that may be useful: 1 Check to see if your computer has a wireless switch ( to switch wireless on and off) ……quite a few laptops have this. Now go to 'internet options' in control panel, connection tab, and select 'never dial an internet connection'. Ok your way out. 2 Now power cycle your wireless router access point….turn it all off, (unplug it if necessary) wait 3 minutes with it off, now turn it all on, again wait another 3 minutes and now close down your computer (a full close down, not a sleep/hibernate/standby, wait 30 seconds with a blank ,black screen and then restart your machine…. see if you now have a wireless connection as this may do the trick for you…if not then: 3 Check that your network adaptor card is recognised (look in Device Manager) check that the card is present and that there is no Yellow or Red marker against it 4 In Device Manager make sure that the properties for your network adaptor card show that it is working correctly. 5 See if any of your chums can access your wireless signal, in your home, using their computers..if so then at least we know the fault is in your computer and not with your router/adsl gateway/access point 6 Post back and let us know how you are getting on…..we will also need to know the following: 7 Make and model number of your computer and the same information for your: 8 Router, modem, Access point and how you normally connect to the Internet….Cable ,ADSL etc 9 Please also advise what encryption you are using…WEP, WPA etc and if you have allowed access to the Internet through your 2 way software firewall…..If you are using a router that includes a hardware firewall, then it would be OK to disable your 2 way software firewall for a test to see if this allows you to access the wireless signal correctly. On receipt of the above information we will advise the next steps Regards paws