I recently bought a passport elite external harddrive to back up my computer (I had never done that before).  I plugged it in and ran it...at first this big screen came up and asked if I wanted WD (Western digital) sync or Mionet.  Not knowing what I was doing, I got Mionet.
Now, I still did not know how to back up computer as there was no place that said backup.  Finally I contacted WD and they told me I had to go into browse and run it.  Ok...so I did that and it seemed to work ok.  I also tried Mionet from work and could extract some of my personal files from my home computer.  I thought it weird but ok.  If I had to pay for the service, I would not but since I think it is free...ok.

Since the backup seemed to work good on my desktop and I had tons of free space (I only used like 18gb of the 350 I bought), I figured I would also back up my laptop.

I plugged it in to my laptop and tried to back up but it was going to charge me 29.95 more so I just backed out.
I again plugged the external hard drive in to my computer.  The computer seemed fine then it started to run loud.
I shut it down.  The next day I turned it on and I could not get out on to the internet using internet explorer which I have always used but I could get out on modzilla firefox.  The The day after I could not get out on that either. 
I have even tried downloading internet explorer from my laptop and running it on my desktop but it needs to get out to the internet to do that...it does exactly the same thing the current one does.  I cannot add or remove programs as the computer hangs up when I try to do anything but open documents or photos..

Everything seems fine and even when I click on internet explorer, it seems to be wanting to open (I get the yahoo page the little world thing turning but nothing opens.  I have tried unplugging everything and plugging it back in.  I have this desktop on the same wifi so I know it is the computer and not my local cable company.
I have the feeling that since everything else seems just fine, that it is some small thing that I am missing?
any suggestions?

I have a dell computer that is not even two years old.  Desktop Inspiron I think