Vista - help please intenet and applications

All,

I am running vista am on my wireless no problem, can get to the internet no problem

then I tried to run stamps.com exe and it says I am not connected to internet, then I ran picassa.exe from my desktop and it says I am not connected

help I need my stamps.com to see I am on the internet so I can run my business

If this behaviour is limited to one or two apps, it's possible that they are attempting some type of "phone home" operation to their vendor which is being blocked by your firewall. In other words, the app tries to contact a server somewhere via a non-standard port (the communication is not standard HTTP), your firewall disallows the app's connection attempt (because it hasn't been configured to let through that specific type of traffic), and the app's logic makes it conclude that your internet connection must be down.

It's just a theory.

Try disabling all firewalls on the machine long enough to see whether it makes a difference. It should only take a few minutes.

Also try booting to "Safe Mode + network" and check whether the app works there. If it does, that means something is loading in normal mode which is interferring wiht the app. If you download the "Autoruns" utility from Microsoft, it can help you check what's loading at startup and selectively disable potential culprits.

Good luck with it.