I am unable to access websites I have previously in the past been able to access on my home laptop running XP Home. I have searched the web for this same symptom and have tried everything I have found, and nothing works.

I have a home network with a total of 4 PC's. The other 3 ARE able to access these websites, so i know it's not my ISP/DNS problem. Up to about a month or so ago, i did not have this problem.

I have run spybot, ad-aware, winsock fix, registry mechanic, verified my browser settings, reviewed my hosts file and any other suggestion I have found but nothing has fixed the problem

I have this problem with both
- IE 6 ("The page can not be displayed") and
- Firefox 1.0 ("Operation timed out when attempting to contact www.usps.com").

When I try to access www.usps.com on any of the other 3 computers on my network (2 desktops and another laptop) it comes right up with no issues.

What could possibly be preventing access to these websites on this one pc? If memory serves me right, it started not too long after installing ad-aware, but that may have been coincidence.

Download HijackThis.
http://209.133.47.12/~merijn/files/HijackThis.exe
http://www.mjc1.com/mirror/hjt/
http://downloads.net-integration.net/HijackThis.exe
http://www.computercops.biz/downloads-file-328.html
http://www.downloads.subratam.org/hijackthis.zip

If you are on Windows XP, extract the file. Do not just doubleclick on it! This opens HijackThis in a temporary folder. This would interfere with the possibility to make back-ups.

Unzip to a folder other than your Desktop or the Temp folder. Then, doubleclick HijackThis.exe, and click "Scan".

When the scan is finished, the "Scan" button will change into a "Save Log" button.
Press that and copy and paste its contents in this thread. When you post the log I will move this thread to HELP! Think you are Infected?.

Most of what it lists will be harmless or even essential, don't fix anything yet. Someone will be along to tell you what steps to take after you post the contents of the scan results.