Firefox simply cannot open a few websites, like the addons page, gravatar, bitly, wikihow to name a few. Nor does any browser on my pc. Please help?

Question

I also tried flushing the DNS clean and also reset the hosts file to default. Please advise on what other measures I can take?

Answer 1

See:
*http://kb.mozillazine.org/Error_loading_websites
You can try to reset (power off/on) the router.
Do a malware check with some malware scanning programs on the Windows computer.<br />
Please scan with all programs because each program detects different malware.
Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.
*Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware:<br>http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php
*SuperAntispyware:<br>http://www.superantispyware.com/
*Microsoft Safety Scanner:<br>http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx
*Windows Defender: Home Page:<br>http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx
*Spybot Search & Destroy:<br>http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
*Kasperky Free Security Scan:<br>http://www.kaspersky.com/security-scan
You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.
*http://support.kaspersky.com/viruses/solutions?qid=208280684
See also:
*"Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked