Can ping sites, but not http to them

This is a spinoff from my thread "Network connection on
Win98SE machine keep failing." I just noticed today that,
after IE loses touch on this machine with the net, I can
still go to DOS command mode and ping various sites
that answer pings, such as yahoo.com and the office
supply chain at staples.ca

So what does it mean if I can ping a site, but not http
to it? Where should I look for the failure? Thanks for
any thoughts.

[I] wrote in message news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> This is a spinoff from my thread "Network connection on
> Win98SE machine keep failing." I just noticed today that,
> after IE loses touch on this machine with the net, I can
> still go to DOS command mode and ping various sites
> that answer pings, such as yahoo.com and the office
> supply chain at staples.ca
>
> So what does it mean if I can ping a site, but not http
> to it? Where should I look for the failure? Thanks for
> any thoughts.
> ...

Forget it, I left Win98 behind and upgraded to WinXP/