an odd XP network problem

I'm havng a little bit of a network issue and cant seem to find the cause. Netscape and msm can connect to the net, but all my games like sc or cossackes, or even internet explorer dont even think i have a connection. Any suggestions?

do you have a firewall running?

what type of net connection?
56gay?
dshell?
cable?

Ok, I figured out what it was. I had been running ZoneAlarm, and when I removed it it had left a few things set... so that was it. And connection wise, i'm at school, so I have a 10MB/s network connection and access to dual ds3's