OpenOffice has wrought havoc on my internet connectivity

[allorache]

Both of my computers are having the same symptom: sometimes on boot they connect to the internet just fine, and other times they will say I am connected, and I can access my local network, but I cannot get to any websites or get email. And when that happens and I try to reboot, it will take the computer like 10 minutes to shut down. These are new computers. One started doing it first. After much troubleshooting with Dell they thought it was a bad wireless card and sent me another. However, as soon as I installed Open Office on the 2d computer (which had been connecting to the internet just fine) it began exhibiting exactly the same behavior. I have uninstalled Open Office, uninstalled and reinstalled the wireless card driver (multiple times), uninstalled the wireless card driver and installed the newest version of the driver for it (multiple times) and this issue is still persisting. At this point I no longer have any interest in using Open Office, I would just like to get my internet connectivity working without having to wipe and rebuild two hard drives. I don’t think installing a new wireless card is going to make any difference. Please help.

[RusselB]

I have never heard of OpenOffice affecting an internet connection, and I have OpenOffice installed on 4 different systems, and none of them exhibit anything like what you're talking about.
You state that you have no interest in using OpenOffice, so why not uninstall OpenOffice. If your internet is still not working properly after uninstalling (and I always recommend rebooting after installing or uninstalling a program), then you're going to have to look elsewhere for the cause, since OpenOffice can't be affecting your internet connection if you don't have OpenOffice.

On a side note, where did you download OpenOffice from? If it wasn't http://www.openoffice.org/download then you may have installed an unsupported version that contains malware, spyware and/or virue(es).
In which case, I also recommend doing a thorough scan of your system for malware, spyware and viruses.

[allorache]

I have also used Open Office for years on many different computers with no problems, but I can't get past the fact that computer #2 only began exhibiting the same systems as #1 right after I installed Open Office.

I did uninstall Open Office. I am wondering if there might be some remnant in it somewhere that is persisting.

I did download it from the official Apache site.

I have rebooted multiple times and done spyware/virus scans.

I am not trying to bash Open Office I have loved it for many years, but I think this is a bug.

[RoryOF]

No Internet connectivity problems on any of my computers using OpenOffice (all versions from Staroffice 8 to OO 4.1,1).

[RoryOF]

Some Trojans/Viruses are smart and hide themselves from the scanners. I'd suggest using a remote scan, such as TrendMicro's HouseCall.

Edit: If you have the original file you downloaded, please scan its MD5sum using the information in How to verify the integrity of the downloaded file?