Name to IP translation non-functioning

My old man's computer is all sorts of messed up.
No matter the browser, none of them will goto a name address, but if a numerical IP address is used, the browsers have no problem (until you try to navigate further into the site)
example:
www.google.com    no good
64.233.161.104    okay
trying to search from 64.233.161.104 or going to any of its subcategories    no good

All other laptops and computers on the network have no problem.  TCP/IP settings for the computer's network settings are ok, it's similar to the other computers.
We've already figured out that something in the DNS or NetBIOS process is missing, a system file or some such.  Anyone know where to find/have such a list of necessary system files?
Google isn't helping, I can't figure out a specific enough search string.

tl;dr : Name resolution for ip addresses aren't working, what are the required/associated system files?

Start -> Run
netsh
winsock reset
Reboot PC.

>>2
No cigar

but, for some reason, one of the start-up programs barfed up some errors.  A hardware monitoring tool that comes with motherboards.

disabling it and retrying did nothing either.

Try putting your DNS server in manually for the network connection in question.

>>4
did that
even used... what was it...
>ipconfig /all
to determine the dns servers and entered them in manually, as I couldn't find them written down anywhere.  Even placed them as alternates on the router.
no good

A conspiracy theory my father has is that the dude that installed the optical network stuff had ran their (Verizon's) virus scanner and had deleted some files.  Apparently one of the files was important.  His theory at least.  I wasn't around, so I have no idea where the log file might've been placed.  Worse yet, it might've been one of those online virus scanners so perhaps no log file was made.  Verizon hasn't been any help in trying to fix the problem.

What does his HOSTS file look like? Can you ping those servers by name? Have you tried lspfix?

The hosts file, was messed up.  localhost was set to 127.0.0.0.  Changed it: no good.  There were no other entries, unless I looked at the hosts file sitting in the internet temp directory.

Looked up lspfix and though the actual program did little to help me, I was able to find a Microsoft help document that helped.
ended up going through
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811259
and while the winsock test
>netdiag /test:winsock
had everything passed, but stuff wasn't working.
Ended up getting rid of
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Winsock
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Winsock2
in the registry.  restart, reinstalled TCP/IP, restarted.  Upon reboot, a svhost barfed a memory error and the system would hang.  Under safe mode >msconfig I found some weird start-up commands (dumprep or some sort).  Turned them off and the system now runs fine.

Thanks for all the help.