laptop networking problem

I work in an office with an existing LAN. We have a
network printer that is connected to this LAN. All our
workstations are operating on Windows 2000. Recently, our
office issued me a laptop that is operating on Windows
XP. We were able to correctly set the proper settings so
that it can connect to our network and print using our
network printer.

Then, I started to notice my Internet connection is
getting sluggish - I thought maybe I need to download
windows xp updates. But upon connecting to the windows
update site - my connection hangs. My colleague told me
that maybe I need to download a spybot to free up my
explorer of spywares. I did just that and I was able to
download the Windows updates. But then I noticed my
laptop can no longer find our printer server and some
workstations in our network. I can no longer print and I
can no longer share files with these missing
workstations. I used the restore option in Spybot
thinking that I might have removed some important
settings - but to no avail. When pinging the ip addresses
of these missing workstations and print server, my laptop
receives positive responses but when I try to locate them
using their computer id's my laptop cannot locate them.
Now, I no longer know what I did wrong; did the Windows
update comlicate things on my laptop that it's network
settings is messed up or did I misuse Spybot and deleted
some important settings? How can I set all these back to
its proper settings?


Hope anybody can help me on this. Thanks in advance.

I had a similar problem awhile back. I cant remember what caused it though. It turned out that my xp internet firewall was enabled. I could therefore ping other addresses on the network but could not connect to any resources. I disabled it and everything worked fine after that.

You can disable it by going into my network places properties.......than lan properties....... and click on the advanced tab.