Well there we go...the mystery is...still unsolved, but at least my computer's working again and on the plus side i have alot more free space on my hard disc to fill up over again!

Right, now im off to play Warcraft, chat on MSN and sign into ebay, because I CAN! lol

Thank alot for your help mate, i guess we'll never know what happened or why.

I hate unsolved mysteries! Never mind!

Glad everything is working again.

Take care.

I dont believe it... its just started again!

I was using my computer on the internet at about 2am, left it on overnight to run a disk defrag...it got turned off while i was still asleep cos my mum thought it wasnt doing anything and now i cant access https sites or MSN, Azureus... exactly the same symptoms!
Even gmail notifier saying it couldnt connect to the mailbox for the last couple of days...should have alerted me that somethin was up but i cannot believe its happened again.

Completely fresh install, no viruses, spyware or anything according to the most up-to-date scanners, ive installed only a fraction of the same programs as i had before, ive even got entirely different hardware! The only similarity is that its my computer

After reading the other recent post on NAT problems i had a look in my event log and indeed i do have 3 occurrences of error 4226 within 4 hours, starting at 12:30 today

I read about what it means on the help and support centre and it sounds related, but what does it imply? That i do indeed have a virus or malicious software?

Typical how im never around the computer just before it starts...and its mysteriously and for no apparent reason as its been working fine for weeks.

Very annoyed, cba to reinstall again unless ABSOLUTELY necessary and sure that its not just gonna happen again and again...but what can i do to stop it? I cant just disconnect from the internet completely!

Back so soon Meat Popsicle!

Microsoft reads this error as "TCP/IP has reached the security limit imposed on the number of concurrent (incomplete) TCP connect attempts". What software was installed just before this problem started? Try this,

- Go to Start, Run and type cmd followed by OK.
- At the command prompt, type Netstat –no
- Find the process with a large number of open connections that are not yet established. These connections are indicated by the TCP state SYN_SENT in the State column of the Active Connections information.
- Note the process identification number (PID) of the process in the PID column.
- Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE and then click Task Manager.
- On the Processes tab, select the processes with the matching PID, and then click End Process.
- If you need to select the option to view the PID for processes, on the View menu, click Select Columns, select the PID (Process Identifier) check box, and then click OK.

just thought you might like too know it's port 80 instead of 8080 for http but it's not like it matters that much.

Thanks mad monkey, that was a useful little tool which im sure ill make use of now i know about it although i didnt need it now after all.
In the end i ended up cutting my losses and reformatting, after the dead-end luck i had last time, and the overwhelming urge to play Battlefield 2142 again i just couldnt be bothered to wait for a possible solution, and following the trend its all nicely working again

Who knows how long it'll last, but this time ive changed my protection, i now use ZoneAlarm firewall and AVG antivirus, dispensing completely with Norton to see if that makes any difference in the long run (plus these are free!)

So hopefully i wont be back here again in another two weeks...but who knows, if i am i'll be comforted by the fact that there are lots of friendly, helpful people like yourself to help me through the problem