[Closed] Right that's it I've had enough (Dell/BT issues)

Can anyone tell me what the hell is going on with my parent's internet connection?

They have a BT home hub (I know but they just won't listen to me) and a dell Inspiron laptop. The laptop says that it is connected to the hub with an excellent signal strength but it won't go online. It works fine with my Mac (running either OSX or XP) and also fine using a wired connection, it just won't work with their laptop. It's running XP and IE8 but I've tried firefox and it doesn't work either.

Any helpful tips would be greatly appreciated although "get a mac" will probably make my dad's head explode so that's no good.