Can't Connect with Any Browser IE or Firefox

I was helping a relative connect to the Internet in the Philippines. They just got high speed Internet and the people installing the Internet couldn't get their browser working. I had my laptop and was able to connect to the Internet using it. The installation people considered their installation successful and told my relative that they had a virus. They advised them to re-format their hard drive. First, let me tell you that you almost never need to re-format your harddrive. That is the last case scenerio when all else fails. Anyway, the computer couldn't connect to the Internet using Firefox and Internet Explorer, but pinging websites was working which was a little confusing.

Anyway, the solution I found to work was typing this command using a MS Dos command prompt.

netsh reset winsock catalog

You should restart your computer and hopefully your Internet will now work.

Goodluck...