[R] Internet Problem in R

[Elizabeth Purdom]

Hi,

I have a student who's R seems to be unable to connect to the internet. I 
have verified that her computer has internet access that's working fine, 
but that R is not able to establish connections. For example, she cannot 
download packages for R from the URL site, cannot source webpages, or 
read.table from a webpage (all of these give errors of not being able to 
establish a connection). Right now I have shown her how to manually 
download the zip file for the package and install it from the local file, 
but she wants Bioconductor -- the instructions for which seem to require 
the usual internet access. Does anyone have any troubleshooting 
suggestions? (I've never had problems with the internet interface with R, 
so I don't even know where to start to try to fix it or even diagnose the 
problem). Could a firewall have this effect? Wireless?

Her computer is running version R.2.3.1, on a Windows XP.

Thanks,
Elizabeth Purdom