skype and e-mule work, but browsers don't -help??

Hi,

I have a laptop on the internet through a landline coming into the house and a wireless router broadcasting the signal to the laptop.

I thought that there was a problem with the router when I could no longer get web pages , but then noticed that skype and e mule still work perfectly.

In command prompt i can 'ping' any website and get a response, but it just won't work in any browser (firefox,explorer,google....)

what has happened? due to virus or updates clashing etc...??
And most importantly, how do i fix?

I had avasti antivirus on it til the problem started, and then a 'technician' told me to uninstall it as it 'looked like a firewall problem'. I did this and it seems to work for about a minute, and then seized up again....

Besides this my laptop works perfectly, and i don't want to go messing about reformatting it etc.... I just want this one little problem fixed! help!!

have you got a proxy server configured in your connections? (maybe hungover from bringin to a work environment)

have you got firewall settings enabled?

have you any port blocking software running?

have you dont any config work on your router that may or may not be blocking http?

reverse any and all of the above if you have to test.

car, i didn't adjust anything to cause the problem and I wouldn't be sure how to adjust the settings you've mentioned, or what to set them to??

can you access your router admin page from a browser? usually 192.168.1.1