Quicksilver

I had what appears to be the same problem, and I tried just about everything you did (and then some). I could connect to my MMORPG, but neither browser (Opera and IE6) worked, widgets could not connect, etc. I figured it had to be something to do with the way my system was looking to resolve DNS addresses (since I could ping everthing). I even had my 'professional' computer friends give it a shot. I was doing a couple last minute things before wiping the drive and reinstalling when I found (ok, noticed) something. When Opera could not find a page, it told me so....and then listed some options for correcting the problem. Duh, the last one had to do with turning off proxy settings. I had never turned proxy settings on, but I took a look, and sure enough, they were turned on - to 127.0.0.1 (sound familiar). Once I turned of the proxy settings for both Opera and Explorer everything was again connecting fine. Now I just need to get rid of the darned tun miniport . Hope that helps, Hg