Well i think i found both of the options although i must have a different version to what you're referring to as there was no 'internet worm protection' tab to click on however i found an option under the anti-virus options regarding such a thing and it was already enabled.

The trojan rule i found easily enough and unchecked the one you specified.

Just tried ebay sign in and the warcraft account page, neither or which load

Surely it cant be a problem with my firewall as it still occurs once ive disabled NIS...

OK, time for some diagnostics!

Can you use the following tool to check to see if the ports are actually being blocked. Since FTP isn't working, you'll need to download it from your other PC and transfer it to the PC your having problems with. For this test, can you only check ports 21, 80, 81, 110 and 443.

Port Detective 2.0 - Helps find out what ports are blocked by your router/firewall or ISP

When you finish the scan, it will bring up an internet explorer window which will show you which of these ports are being blocked.

Lol funny thing, i managed to download the setup from the afflicted PC and install the program but when i load it, it says its 'Connecting to the Port Detective Server' which naturally it cant do...
I guess whichever port it connects to its server on is being blocked, although interestingly an alert from Norton came up asking if i want to allow the program and obviously i selected yes so i dont see why it should be!

Below is a picture of the machine in question with the error i recieve.
http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/5666/screenyhl6.jpg

I did however run the program on my other PC and heres a picture of the results...
http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/3320/portstl6.jpg
...although thinking about it, that probably wasnt the most helpful thing to do as that computer doesnt have a problem.

Not really sure what the next step is, i really appreciate you trying so hard to help me ive posted this same question on 3 other forums and you're the only person whose replied despite many views.

Hi Popsicle

OK, try this one! I need you to paste the log back here.

Download HijackThis!

Make sure that HijackThis is installed in it's own folder and not a temporary location.
Then run HijackThis (in regular mode , not safemode) choosing the top option to "do a system scan and save a log file", save the log to your desktop.

The scarey, yet interesting thing which you just posted was that on the good PC, port 80 and 21 which were clearly used to navigate and download Port Detective, were showing as blocked!!

Can you also try shutting down the good PC. Reboot the bad PC and see if the problem goes away? If that works, I'll have an answer for you!

Also, a bit off topic now...

Windows Firewall turns itself back on everytime you get a windows update.

Only way to stop it is to goto Start -> Run -> services.msc and disalbed Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) and stop it.

Back over to madmonkey!