Mike,
I could suggest a number of possibilties for this but the
one that comes immediately to mind is that I got infected
with the Blaster worm the other week and this was one of
the symptoms. Presumably the computer was too busy
infecting the rest of the world to respond to me! It did
eventually appear after I disconnected the system from the
Internet (I pulled the cable).
If you are physically disconnected from the Internet and
you still have the problem then this is probably not the
case. Give it a try.
regards,
JackOfHearts.
