Any idea's please?

[Bubbaloo]

I can connect to Mumsnet,Play,Rightmove and a few other sites but I haven't been able to access the main ones I use all day,such as Hotmail,Yahoo,Google,Ebay,Facebook etc...
It's really frustrating and not being technically minded,I haven't a clue what the problem may be.
The modem/router seems to be ok and says its connected locally and internet.

Any idea's please?

Thanks.

Have you done a virus scan and have you got anti-spyware software?

Spyware can prevent access sometimes I think.

Thanks.
I've got Avira Antivir which we downloaded for free when we bought the laptop.Never had any problems with it,so far(that I'm aware of).

Are you on Orange broadband?
Because we are & we had this last night & so did a friend of DH's he was talking to on MSN.

Sometimes I couldn't get to Google at all, sometimes I could but not to any of the sites the search threw up. I couldn't get BBC news most of the time, or Hotmail, I could get onto our school's website, but not Warwick uni.

It was happening on 3 different laptops running various combinations of XP/Vista & IE6/IE7 & Firefox - the only thing they had in common was the broadband.

Fortunately MN stayed available throughout, thus saving my sanity....

Yes,we're with Orange.
It's been a nightmare all day as the connection only came back at 7pm this evening.
I phoned them earlier and they were so inundated with calls,they had a recorded message,saying they had a problem,from 11am this morning.
Really strange as Mumsnet,Rightmove and Play were virtually the only sites I could get,but they were extremely slow to load.
All up and running again now,though.

Mine was completely out when I got home at about five, not sure when it came back as I got on with RL and didn't come back till 8