I have been running a dual boot machine with WinXP and Mandrake 10.0 for a while. Under MDK I cannot connect to any SSL sites (prominent examples: Hotmail, Egg, java.sun.com), Instant Messenger applications, and cannot use SSH. I cannot SSH under Windows, although I can use MSN Messenger and the websites I mentioned under IE (they refuse to work under Firefox).

I just got a brand new Dell, this time running Win2000 and Fedora Core2 and am having the same problem. All the hardware is different.

I work in a University (maybe the firewall could cause this?). I have tried a different IP address and different physical network sockets. Colleagues with the same systems do not have problems, from within the same building.

I am at a loss. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Is there any way I could accidentally create a default user (e.g. myself) to be denied access from using different protocols?