Barry, we have made some progress; some of the progress has happened without known cause: 1. Attempts to disable the network cable resulted in these findings on page entitled Network Connections: Local Area Connection Network Cable unplugged Broadcam 440x 10/100 Integrated Wireless Network Connection connected 1394 connected Broadband Disconnected WAN miniport PPPOE Internet Gateway: Internet Connector Connected, Dell True Mobile 1300 WLAN-Mini PC After that, we attempted to connect the internet and the error message was: Check Firewall settings for HTTP Port 80; HHRS Port 443 FTP Port 21 You might need to contact your ISP We turned off Windows Firewall The next attempt to access the Internet was a success!!!! But----we cannot change pages without returning to home page. To illustrate: we use both Comcast and Yahoo as our news pages. We were taken to comcast home page but could not read an article that required moving to another page. That error message was _cannot connect to various ports_ as listed above. The wire that has a plug to be plugged into regular wall outlet is used when we charge the battery. We plugged in that wire to the back of the laptop, planning to charge the battery. To our utter consternation, the laptop screen jumped, visibly, and went straight to google that we use for home page. We almost fainted. But---still, we cannot move from one page to another without returning to home page. Thank you for all your time and advice and guidance. Shall we say we begin to feel this is a lost cause? Rick

Hello RickandRana, Thursday, August 19, 2010, 1:29:29 PM, you wrote: R> We turned off Windows Firewall R> The next attempt to access the Internet was a success!!!! OK, looks like the Windows Firewall has got itself in a mess and that's the reason you are having all this trouble. Turning it off only goes so far as there are sections of it that you can't actually turn off no matter what you do !! Two things to try are a reset of the Windows Firewall and reset of the browser ( presumably Internet Explorer ). To reset the Windows Firewall: Go to [ Start / Run ] and type in firewall.cpl and hit [Enter] then click on the 'advanced' tab in the window that appears. In there you'll see the 'Restore Defaults' button so click on that. You'll get a warning message about programs not working but they aren't working anyway so ignore and click 'Yes'. To reset Internet Explorer: Go to [ Start / Control Panel / Internet Options / Advanced ] and in there you'll see the 'Reset' button to click on. It will change your home page to the system default so it will be a good idea to bookmark the home page to restore it later. -- Best regards, Barry mailto:[email protected] MicroSoft Free Zone running Ubuntu 10.04 'Lucid' 64bit