Operation Timed Out When Logging In To Secure Sites Like eBay or PayPal

[dodgerblue 0]

Does anyone know why this is so or how to fix it?I'm running Firefox 1.0 on WinXP Home. I've read that this combination (and also IE6+ on XP with service packs) causes this error.I haven't installed SP2 but I think my laptop came with SP1 installed already. Last night my computer rebooted itself saying it had installed a critical update and needed to restart. It was downhill from there. Programs that connected to the internet through various ports started giving me errors and this "operation timed out when trying to connect to ..." error started popping up everywhere.I've cleared my cache, cleared cookies, everything. But the only places I can log in to are my forum, Xisto forum, my blogs, and gmail but that's about all.Oh yeah, and adsense won't even load the start page.It's starting to annoy me greatly. I would like to ask for help before I smash up the computer......

[hype 0]

Do you have firewall enabled? Firewall may cause you to have this problems... You've to disable it if you have it enabled...

[dodgerblue 0]

It's okay, it's the fault of my ISP. (Starhub, who else... )They're performing maintenance, so it seems. Supposedly ONLY between 2am-6am, but I guess things went terribly wrong somewhere.Whatever. I just have to clench my teeth and wait.

[hype 0]

That's why I didnt go for starhub... They seems to provide more stuff and faster connections but they're not that reliable... So I choose Singtel as my isp instead of starhub...

[dodgerblue 0]

Heh, I actually prefer Pacific. Their ADSL was da bomb.Well I can't connect to Gmail at all now. (Read update on my blog.)Called Customer Service, the connection to overseas secure sites is down. Local secure sites are OK. I tested this by logging in to the Singpost site, and it was successful. Anyway I think it's a problem with the country-country connection. The whole internet seems sluggish, even in school (I checked my mail in school this morning - first time I thanked God for school ).Anyway I think we're going off topic, can some mod close this please