Something blocks Web Browser and system restore, but nothing else on Windows XP

[Bengal]

I've been hunting for this thing on my roommate's computer for two days now, with no luck.  Browser claims that it's possibly a firewall problem, and port 80 appears to be blocked, but I've been pretty thorough checking the firewall (he was using windows firewall, not much help there.) It won't let him system restore, and it won't let him view any webpage in the browser except for archived stuff in offline mode, regardless of IE or Mozilla (He doesn't have chrome or opera installed). My websearches don't find anything that really resembles this one, and none of the windows 7 boxes in the house seem to have this problem.

I'm open to ideas at this point.

[Left123]

possible infection(runnin proxy server?)
try www.malwarebytes.org

[Bengal]

Malwarebytes didn't find anything.  I can transfer just about any file to him through Instant Messenger that I need, so I got the latest version and tried it.  No luck there.

[Left123]

i will pm essexboy to help you,good night

[Bengal]

Solved.

I can't believe I didn't see it before, but thinking about your comment, Left123, I reviewed his settings.

The only thing that was still going on was that his darned browser settings were set to use a dadgum proxy server, which doesn't exist.

I'll figure out the system restore thing later, but that was...just silly.

[Tarq57]

Bengal, glad it's sorted, can you edit your OP, and prefix the thread title with something like " [Solved] " please?