yeah firefox does work (the same as IE7 though (only google.com)). I don't think its a hardware problem, I can ping any site and get replies. I installed MSN messenger and that won't connect to the server but there is a connection troubleshooter in it which is interesting. It tests certain aspects of your connection abnd it had little green ticks next to these 5 options:
IP
default gateway
hosts file
DNS
proxy server

And it timed out or didn't work on these 3:
IE's offline setting
Key ports
Wireless

I've also tried completly disabelling the firewall, but only google.com works there aswell. Also I found that if I go to news.com it will bring in the title of the page but nothing else. Its very weird, its as though Vista is filtering out sites it dosn't like (ie the whole web apart from google)
Any ideas?