sites wont load

on my dads computer when i go to internet explorer, on the status bar it says searching for site ........ then i get an error on the screen that says:
The internet explorer could not open the search page.

When i go into cmd and ping a site i have no problems.

have you tried typing www prior to the website. looks like it is trying to search and not working.

i type in www.google.com into the address bar and that is the error i get

but i can ping google just fine

Test the settings by using another profile on the machine.
If that works :
Its IE itself...
You can rebuild local profile.
Try clearing cookies, cache and offline files and folders.
Setting the IE settings all back to default.
Tools/INt Options/security:Internet: set to default.

Could be two things DNS or Winsock, elimiate DNS if you can ping www.google.com so the only problem could be winsock. Try winsockfix and uninstalling and reinstalling TCP/IP

Forgot to mention winsockfix does this all for you plus restore your registry, if your gonna use winsockfix I suggest you create a restore point and backup registry just incase. After restarting windows it should take awhile to load so don't panic like I did LOL