Cannot open apple.com site pages

I cannot open the apple.com or apple.com.au sites in either FF or IE8.

I think it is a Quicktime issue but I have tried uninstalling/installing without success.

I have no idea where to start

In IE I get the little rotating ring and a blank page, in FF i may get part of a page to load but often I get the little rotating thingy with "waiting for images.apple.com" in the bottom LH corner..

This is on my Vista home premium install

I have just installed Safari and it too has similar issues...

I can open apple.com/startpage in all three browsers but thereafter if I click on the support tab it just sits there.... and may/may not load after a long time.

It only happens on my VISTA installation, 3 imacs, XP, XP pro and W7 all run just fine with FF and/or Safari

FIXED

I discovered that my Lavasoft Ad-Aware was the cause, uninstalled and reinstalled latest version and so far seems fixed.

Exact reason remains a mystery though...