Only 1 of my NS protected Win7 machines has this issue. Have done online virus checks with ESET and TrendMicro. When I turn off Smart Firewall I can access Windows Update, google.com, yahoo.com etc. just fine. I've made Microsoft's suggested Windows Update site addresses "allowed" in Smart Firewall's Traffic Rules just to see if that helped - it didn't. I point out that this affects a couple of "classes" of connections: a Windows service, search urls, the weather desktop gadget, plus some others that I can't remember.