Malware breaks internet connections all the time. What was the name of the Malware ? snidely is right about the firewall, that's why we try to boot to safe mode with networking it by passes the firewall or firewalls, and the Anti Virus program all in one shot. Restart the computer, keep tapping the F8 Key, wait for the windows advanced boot options menu to show, black screen with white letters, form the list select Safe Mode with networking using the arrow keys, hit enter, let the computer boot into safe mode with networking. Now try connecting to www.google.com. Let us know if it connects there, don't surf in that mode. Tell us the name of the Malware, that the internet said was a bad one.

Firefox ... another quick way also (for many things); 1.Enter about:config into the address bar and hit Enter. 2.Press the "I"ll be carefull." button. 3.Enter browser.urlbar.maxRichResults in the Filter field. Right click and edit. 4.Set it to any number of suggestions.

Thanks, Terry. So simple - yet so valuable. (By the way, what's HTH - you can see my computer literay is limited.) Lynn.

First of all let's clear this up. Opera works fine with Vista. I've had Opera on my Vista machine since I got it and use Opera on every one of my computers. I know a lot of people using Opera on Vista. Any claim that it won't work on Vista is pure malarkey. If you're having trouble, you have other issues, but don't make the best browser in the world the scapegoat. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, (maybe millions?) of people are using Opera with Vista, and very happily. One of my favorite features is the X & Z keys for forward and back, rather than the combination of keys or using the mouse. I have the menu button and customized toolbar so I get maximum screen space. It's such a fast browser. In fairness, there's some pages out there written poorly so they don't always appear quite right in Opera, but Opera has adjusted. Then of course there's the sites, like the big one whose name shall not be said, who "borks" the sites. While yes, Opera is "different" from the Internet Elephant, Firefox, K-meleon, Netscape, Safari and other browsers are also "different" from the Internet Elephant. And what's more, they're different from each other. Ford is different from Chev, and they're both different than BMW, but that doesn't mean they're not all very similar in operation. Don't be afraid to try something "different". How does my computer know which one I want to open my sites with? The computer (and you have input) sets a key on a "default" program to use to open certain file types. For instance it may set Adobe Reader to Open .PDF files. And you might set a different media player to open .WAV files. These are easily changed if you like. If I download Opera and like it, how do I go back and forth between it and FF? If you have them open at the same time, simply use ALT+TAB or click on the taskbar to switch programs. Otherwise, you might have it automatically open in the browser of your choice or open up the program like you open any other. I would suggest using shortcuts in Quicklaunch for fast access rather than tie up your desktop or start menu. How would I go back to FF and uncheck to not make it the default browser? There's a setting in each of the browsers in Options for them to check each time to see if they're the default browser. You can just disable that option. ALSO, if I uncheck that box, does it list the other browsers so I can pick the one I want to make default? Not in the browser itself, but if you do a shift+right click and bring up "Open With", you can choose any program to open the selected file. I heartily recommend you give Opera a try. But give it a month or two so you get used to it. Do a search for "Opera Tips" and get a feel for some of the special features. You can customize it a lot or a little. It's far superior to Firefox in that Firefox requires the addition of so many add-ons to make it reasonably functional and all of the features are already in Opera. Not saying Firefox is bad, but it's really essentially an Opera Wannabe. However there are a lot of cool add-ons that can make Firefox unique too. I often run 3 browsers at the same time. One for surfing, one for monitoring a webmail account and sometimes the third if there's an issue with the others. Oh, and yes, there is one issue I have with Opera. I can't pay my phone bill using it. I have problems with Firefox too. But K-meleon works fine. I don't remember the last time I had to open the Internet Elephant. Another advantage of Opera: The elephant requires patches all the time. All browsers do. But the whole new Opera install is less than 6mb where IE's patches are often 3 times that. Makes a big difference if you're on dialup.