I have a Toshiba A70 laptop with win XP SP2. It has been working
perfectly for years but has recently decided to delete all of the icons
in the network connections folder. However the network still works and I
can connect to the local network with both a cable and wireless connection.
Also programs such as IE or firefox cannot connect to the net but I can
connect to my home network and to my home e-mail server.

I have checked for spam and virii with no success.

Brett

Brett Kirkness wrote:
> I have a Toshiba A70 laptop with win XP SP2. It has been working
> perfectly for years but has recently decided to delete all of the icons
> in the network connections folder. However the network still works and I
> can connect to the local network with both a cable and wireless connection.
> Also programs such as IE or firefox cannot connect to the net but I can
> connect to my home network and to my home e-mail server.
>
> I have checked for spam and virii with no success.
>
> Brett

Have you tried installing and running Windows Defender?

This could be a case of winsock hijacking (where you are refused
outgoing connections to the internet, and the mallware app gets it all
to itself).

(I assume that your home servers are on local ips)