TCP/IP Problem

I have a very odd situation. On my laptop, I connect to the Internet via dial up and can only reach the Internet with IE. Firefox, my AV, any other program that requires the Internet cannot connect. Pinging www.google.com results in a "cannot find host error" but I can reach Google with IE. Recently the tech people at work installed a remote desktop profile so that I can log into our network and I assume that this has something to do with this issue. Quite frankly, our tech people are grossly incompetant or I would ask them to fix this.
I shut off my FW so that has nothing to do with it. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am running XP SP2.

 

The only thing I can find in my system setting is that I have a primary DNS suffix for my work server assigned to my computer. Could this interfere with my connection settings when using dial up?

 

Firstly - when you connect to the internet, you need a firewall. Switch it back on!

Secondly. Yes. If your DNS is set to only look at the works DNS server, this could well effect your ability to successfully use the internet as you may not be able to resolve internet names. So you may be able to get to Goolge by IP address (http://216.239.59.147) but not by name (http://www.google.com).

You only being able to connect via IE before this is similar to what I used to see with users using AOL. Are you using AOL?