IE no longer has internet access due to spyware - how to restore?

Sup!

My dad's PC has some troubles and I can't seem to solve them on my own. He had some spyware last month so I removed it all, but IE still cannot connect to any sort of website (the spyware was rerouting it to some scam site or something). He needs IE because his work e-mail service and related sites don't work with FF (..)

Firefox works fine so it's really just IE. I ran the network diagnostics and XP says that 'IE cannot connect to the internet by http(s) or related blabla, check firewall settings'. I loaded the default settings in windows firewall but it still won't work.

I found some sort of possible solution here: http://www.onecomputerguy.com/ie_tips.htm#winsock_fix but am not sure if that is the same problem.

I tried resetting all of IE's (advanced) settings as proposed elsewhere, but this only caused it to go from an immediate 'unable to connect' to sitting forever at 'connecting to <IP>'.

Ideas?

- Sjaak.

Very late reply so you may have already fixed this. If not, check IE for a proxy server. Tools, Internet Options, Connections, LAN Settings. If there's a weird looking proxy server, turn it off. I imagine that would be reset though by 'RIES'. If that doesn't do it, check the DNS settings on your NIC.

In a couple cases I've seen spyware change these settings.

Oh cool I'll remember that for the future