Interesting Weirdness with WinXP and Mozilla.org

I just bought a new Sony Vaio computer with WinXP Media Center Edition
and SP2.

I used Internet Explorer to run Windows update for the latest security
fixes, which is the only thing I ever normally use IE for, and then I
tried to use the pre installed Netscape browser to download Mozilla.  

The Netscape browser could not access the internet, even though my
firewall explicitly allows it, and even when I turned the firewall off
completely.

So I went back to IE and pointed it at Mozilla.org.  The page barely
loaded.  It took a few minutes (I have broadband).  Then the link to
download Mozilla didn't work at all, nor did any other links on the
page.

I tried reloading the page.  Didn't work.  I tried other web pages
such as google, yahhoo, etc.  Everything worked fine, but still not
Mozilla.org.

Wondering if the Mozilla web page was having problems I turned to my
other computer, and it was able to load the pages and download
Mozilla, no problem.  But the new computer still couldn't do it.
Hmmm.

I finally used the old computer to burn a copy of the Mozilla
installation file to a disc, and used that to install it on the new
computer.  It worked perfectly.  Once it was installed IE suddenly
worked again on the Mozilla site.  Very strange.  Knowing M$ history,
I wouldn't be surprised if they are setting things up to discourage
people from switching browsers.