Network, yes. IE no? No webpages

Hello all,

Ok, I got a good one... And it's defeated me. So I come to you, the might Windows gurus, humbly requesting assistance!

One of my users has a T42 IBM laptop. All of his networking functions (e-mail, mappings, etc) work perfectly. I have a DHCP address, just as I should. I can release it. I can renew it. I can traceroute. I can ping anything I want. I can make it hop, skip, and jump. Even twirl.

But when you open IE, nothing: Page Cannot be Displayed. On EVERY site on the web. I can ping www.microsoft.com, but I cannot visit www.microsoft.com. So naturally I thought of a browser hijack and ran the entire Best Buy Geek Squad (my co-worker has a PT gig there) pack. I ran a full virus scan that found nothing (we're well-protected at work). I ran HJT, Ewido,, CWShredder, Ad Aware, and countless other utilities that were on this CD. I found some spyware, but no virii. And certainly not a lot of anything. Then I rebooted. It worked! For 3 minutes...

I've reset TCP/IP. I've reset IE back to default. I've run chkdsk. I've run every utility known to man. I've updated every driver available. If you reboot, you have IE for 2-3 minutes, then it dies again.

I get no errors. Nothing in the Event Log.

I've been beaten, folks. Before I format and reinstall (which I REALLY don't want to do), I'm open to suggestions. Please help!

Thank you!

Chris

PS. Installing another browser (FF or Opera) is not possible due to policy.

 

Is it possible that there's some type of security software installed that limits how long you can use IE for? There's a fair amount of programs out there that will do this. I'd try disabling all startup programs in msconfig and then see what happens. If you are prevented from doing this because of a policy, have a look in task manager to see what's running and Google those that you don't know what they are. Perhaps if you find something that may be causing it you could kill it with task manager although if policies are in place, I'm not sure.

Does this computer belong to a company or is it his own PC?