Windows 7: Have DNS client error 1012, All Browsers are crashing

My laptop is almost unusable because firefox, explorer and chrome are constantly crashing. I don't know a lot about computers but have been trying to figure out what is causing the crashes. I tried uninstalling my antivirus avg and it did not help. I also uninstalled chrome and firefox and then added them back with no change. I checked my event logs and found dns client 1012 errors but did not know if that has anything to do with the browsers crashing. Help! Thanks.

First Check your %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\ directory for a "hosts" file, if it doesn't exists create it and add
127.0.0.1 localhost to the file then save the file there itself.
If you do have the file ensure it is readable by administrators, system and users (right click > properties > permissions ).


Hope that helps !