Can ping ip's, cannot browse, email or icq

I'm at a loss. I can ping any ip address I know without problems, but I cannot browse the internet, email or icq. I cannot connect to the internet to perform these tasks and I need to have access shortly, like yesterday

I'm running w98se, connect through a router.
I re-installed w98se twice, but it keeps making things worse, I should not even have done that the first time

Does anybody know how to solve my problem, or have any tips as to what to check and how?

It is not clear what you mean by you can ping any ip address. So can you ping microsoft.com?

Ignoring the ping works statement it would appear your problem is with internet connectivity and not OS related.

Can you telnet/http into your router? Can you ping from the router to the ISP? Have you disabled all firewall related software on your workstation so you can do clean testing?

Simple test: can you ping google.com? Can ie go to google.com? Or do you have to put in the ip address of 216.239.51.100 and does that work?

Are you getting a dhcp from the router ip address? Do a ipconfig or winipcfg and post the first two octets of your ip address.

thanks for the reply, but this problem is already fixed, it has been over 3 weeks you know :-)

Cannot remember what solved it though, I think installing another OS did the trick