i solved this myself.
FYI for anyone searching this........
i had gone into IE and selected to work offline. (i wanted to view the downloaded files and see what it viewed as without outside files that were be called in the scripts). somehow this affected DW ability to connect to the internet as well. As soon i went back to IE and deselected the work offline option, site import suddenly worked again.
i do not use IE often so i dont know why this affected DW, but it did.