thanks for your help. I did find the problem. I looked in my task manager and found "msblast.exe". that is what was cause ing the connection problem. I ran a scan and my virus progam did not find it right away. i also ran adware 6.0. it four 400 bad entries and the worm. the virus program took care of it. i now run the adware evey day when i get on. Plus my virus program did not have the enable file proctection on all the time. it does now. Well hope this helps some one else with a simular problem.