Unable to connect to Microsoft sites and more!!

[trimi]

Hello guys, few days ago I bought a laptop HP Pavilion dv6647cl with Vista Home Premium and it came ready for me with preinstalled environment setup; i.e. For the first time, when I powered it up, the installation wizard led me to final configuration (computer name, regional settings etc.,). After finishing it all, I took the Ethernet cable of my ADSL Modem to plug it on the ethernet port of the laptop and start surfing the internet. The page would be found and continue to load but never finish, and at the end it displayed a message like Webpage not found.... There is exception with Google, some Yahoo pages, etc, which can open, but all Microsoft sites, including Hotmail, Update site, etc. refuse to open.
The laptop has Norton IS installed, and I uninstalled it in my attempts to connect to internet, I also disabled IPv6, and followed some instructions from other people who tried to help me out but all efforts resulted non-productive.
I found a thread in one forum with one workaround but not a solution. I could connect on the internet only if I rebooted the laptop, then hit the icon to connect on the internet and then go to sleep mode. After I resumed from sleep mode I could then connect again (as the sleep mode disconnected the line) and then it would be established normal surfing for all the webpages.
In the begining I thought that this problem with networking is related to HP sofware or antivirus, and to identify the cause I took a CD with Vista Ultimate and installed it fresh. It had no additional software, only Vista Ultimate. Then I only installed the Ethernet driver and tried to connect. I faced same situation. No result.
Thank you for your contribution in this issue.

[sudhakarg]

trimi, did you have any luck with the problem that you have quoted. I have a similar issue with my laptop. I'm able to connect to all sites - *except* microsoft.com. And this happens only from my workplace where everyone else can connect to microsoft.com.