BleepingComputer.com: dial up modem connects, explorer does not

Recently my system acted up and I suspected the power supply. I replaced it and found some disk errors, corrected them. Suddenly I had issues shutting down the system and the program iptray would not stop. I couldn't even remove iptray because the program would hang. I was able to take care of all that and the system seems stable. I only have dial up at home (No DSL or Cable within a mile of my house). The phone lines are bad (31.2 is best speed I've ever gotten). I tried to dial up my provider and the modem connects, gets an IP and I receive 267 bytes. When I open any application (firefox, explorer, AVG) that needs to attach to the connection, nothing happens. From the command prompt, I try to ping the gateway and I get no response.
I've reinstalled the modem, repaired XP home, swapped PCI ports for modem. Run winsockxpfix, installed windows network tools and run netsh reset, readded my network connection. I've checked the eventlogs and the only error I find if NTPclient unable to contact time server. This has got me stumped.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor
Intel BOXDP35DPM LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
A-DATA 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory
SAMSUNG Black 20X DVD Burner
Microsoft Windows XP Home With SP2B for System Builders 1 Pack

Thanks
Frustrated in NJ

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320558