HTTP works but HTTPS doesn't!!

I had an interesting problem with my personal laptop last week. Here is the specs on my, um I mean our, laptop.

Make: Dell
OS: XP SP3
NIC: Dell wireless (didn't use the wired NIC)
ISP: Local Cable company

So here was my problem. After signing on my laptop, the laptop would proceed to connect to the wireless network in our house, it would then sign onto the IM service that I use, and then the rest of the programs would finish loading on my laptop. When everything got finished loading I would start to surf the Internet, because what else do you do with a computer at home right?!?! After about 3-5 minutes of being on the Internet, it would just suddenly stop working. I would get "Page can not be found" message and for the life of me could not get a website (even ones I had just visited).

So being the tech guy that I am I started looking into it, here is what I found....
1. I was still signed into my IM service, and it was still working properly.
2. I could PING and TRACERT to any website (even using the name of the website and not their IP address) with out any problems. The traffic was a little slow, but still a reasonable amount of time.
3. I could access HTTPS websites (bank, other financial institutions, secure hotmail, etc).
4. I could access my office desktop just fine for as long as I wanted (we use a Cisco VPN software to access the office PC from home).

While this was really throwing me for a loop. For all intensive purposes it should work (especially since IM was working and so were HTTPS websites). Thoughts about hackers attacking my laptop, viruses corrupting all of my data, keyloggers stealing my passwords all danced in my heads.

Trying not to freak out, I started to do some looking around on the Internet (to prevent all of the comments, I went to my office to do the research), while at the same time running a virus scan on my laptop (which didn't show anything). In my research I couldn't find anything. I did find others who were having the problems however no solutions. (thus me posting this blog). I did find some cases where people were having problems with ZoneAlarm (a firewall software) in which uninstalling and reinstalling fixed the problem. I also found where the problem existed with different Operating Sytems (98, ME, XP, Vista, Linux, etc). I also found forums that talked about this problem existing where users finally just had to totally reinstall Windows in order to fix it. Then I finally found a forum where I guy mentioned that sometimes three specific programs can cause this problem. These programs were ZoneAlarm, Norton Anti-virus, and Cisco VPN software.

Interestingly enough I had two of these three programs installed on my laptop. Also interestingly enough the next post was a guy bashing the post saying that it would not help 90% of the people out there. I really wish that I could find that forum to give the guy credit, however I closed that webpage and can't seem to find it again. Oh well.

So in trying to fix the problem I uninstalled the Cisco VPN software, but it only made my problem WORSE! Now instantly after logging into my laptop I could not get on the Internet. WHAT THE HECK!?!?!?! So I went into the registry and edited all of the instances of the software out of the registry and STILL nothing. Almost at my wits end I reinstalled the Cisco software and it STILL would only work for a few minutes. AUGH!!!

Anyway, making a long story short, eventually I was on-line enough to download several Windows Updates. Once those were installed the thing started working fine. I don't know if I was being attacked, or someone was using my laptop as a bounce in an attack, or I just needed to reboot a second time, or something else was going on. I just don't know. What I do know is that the laptop is working and I can move on to the next big issue in my life now. :S OH the joys of being a tech person.

Hope this helps someone out there. Best of luck!