His IE is working, but his messengers aren't. Have you configured your firewall to deny access to these programs? (Some Firewalls whenever a program wants to connect to the internet, ask's you for permission first. And if you deny it this will happen. This is commonly associated with ZoneAlarm).
He was talking about going into Tools > Internet Options > Privacy in Internet Explorer. But that will not fix your problem, as your problem isn't with IE.