Resolved programs cannot connect to internet

Hello, Recently my programs are unable to connect to the internet, this applies to all the programs I have checked, inc Adobe programs (cannot check for updates, no online help), windows help etc. There have been no Windows Updates for a while on my desktop while there have on my laptop.
I use Google Chrome browser and that works perfectly.
Outlook sends and receives messages OK, but incoming messages have no images, just small x in the corner (as in Amazon selling messages).
I have tried turning off the Windows Firewall - no good.
I have tried turning off F-Secure Anti Virus/Internet suite - no good.
My laptop, which uses the same modem and my second computer work OK so I don't think it is the modem.
I believe it happened when I opened Internet Explorer to check a website for a friend (I don't use IE) and after that the connections were lost. I uninstalled IE but that didn't help. Tried to reinstall but was told that a later version was already installed. I don't need IE.
Can anyone help please?

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UPDATE
After suffering from this problem for a month, the day after I wrote this everything has gone back to normal. The only thing I did was to turn the firewall and anti-virus programs off and then on again.Very strange. And of course I raised this on Windows BBS, so perhaps that scared my computer into putting things right!
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I agree, the WindowsBBS threat may have sufficed to just scare the mysterious box of lights into working.

 

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