I'll give you a website for Vista Repair. If you have dial-up
give it time to load. Take your time and read it.
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial148.html

I'm not sure what "stop reading search engines" means. What happens if she tries to go to www.gogle.com or search.yahoo.com? Nothing? Are other web sites working? Ordinarily if certain web sites are being blocked I'd suspect some form of malware. If she has any antivirus or antimalware software I'd suggest she run both in safe mode and see what they turn up.

Have your friend post a hijackthis log also. The default search engines are listed in the ro enrties. I'd like to see it.

That sounds more like a virus to me than anything related to updates. I recently had a nasty one that would send me to totally unrelated sites whenever I clicked on a hit in any search engine. It took a bit of work to remove it.

Replacing Vista with XP is not a reasonable or advisable solution...and is probably beyond the computer skills of your friend. It sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

If the computer is to be wiped then use the Compaq CDs and return to factory defaults. Why waste money on an operating system that is 2 generations old?

I have to agree I sure would not go that route just because she is unable to access search engines. That would be an extreme measure. It would be a better choice to move to Windows 7 if she really was going to do something that drastic. Since she has Vista a move to 7 would be a normal progression. But I would definitely try to find out what was causing the problem before doing that.

Get a HJT log for Zep and lets see what is happening with that computer. She may somehow have got all of them blocked in a host file or they may be blocked in her browsers blocked list. Those are the first 2 places I would look

has she installed other browsers and tried to see if she can access them with those new browsers, I would tell her to try firefox and opera both.

Thanks, folks, I'll pass these suggestions on to her. She lives more than 100 miles from the nearest "computer shop" and is trying to fix the problem with her nephew's help. It has them both stumped.

Yes, ever since she installed Microsoft.NET framework 2.0, service pack 2 security update for Windows Vista Service pack she can no longer search for anything (using any search engineÂGoogle, Yahoo, Mozilla).

An index page will come up but none of the links/sites will open. She canÂt X-out of that screen.

She has to hit Alt/ctl/delete and restart task manager; the whole system closes down and she has to log back on.

She can open her bookmarks, but canÂt go anywhere from them.

She has a Compaq Presario computer. Windows Vista home basic.

She has run McAfeeÂs virtual technician and security scans. They said everything was fine. It isnÂt.

She has shut down and restarted her computer several times. Nothing seems to work.

Boot the computer to SAFE MODE W/NETWORKING. See what happens from there.

Disable any firewall connected

Think I might use something like CCleaner to delete the index.dat & also clear history, cookies, forms, etc,,,, all of it in the IE & Mozilla browser clear cache locations & untick the 'preserve websites.

Just wondering does she have the Google toolbar?