^^^ i dont do all of the above thing...i am not that nooob yaar hyeah:
well can you give me the free version link of this...will download and install it then
not being able to access the net using the browser but the downloads continuing in the background sounds like a DNS issue to me. So verify that the DNS setup on the laptop is correct.
While your access is up try noting down the IP address of google. (ping Google from cmd), and when you are not able to access the net through the browser, use the ip address in place of Google in the browser.
That should confirm if it is a DNS issue or not.
hyeah: