dropping internet connection

Have had a Dell XPS 410 running Vista Ultimate for 2 months and it still is
dropping my Internet connection 14 or more times a day. Have to restart to
connect again.

I have a wired connection to a AT&T 2wire router and DSL. The dropped
connections seem to occur more often when I start up (from overnight
shutdown) in the morning. Then during the day the connection will hold
sometimes for 3 or 4 hours but also will drop sometimes in just a few minutes
after a restart.

I tried disenabling all automatic processes from Norton (installed by Dell),
Windows update and anything else I could find but didn't seem to make a
difference. I ran the Microsoft Internet connectivity evaluation tool and
passed all except the UPnP support test which it says should not affect my
basic connectivity.

The internet connection is ok since I have a 2K machine connected right
beside the Vista and have switched everything. 2K works all day. No dropped
connections.

When the connection is dropped and I go to Network connections and look at
the connection it says disabled. If I try to enable it the whole process
slows up and it takes about 2-3 minutes to tell me that it can't enable. If I
try to go into the sleep mode at this point the computer hangs (screen blanks
but the power switch light instead of pulsing will stay on and only thing to
do is to disconnect from power.) Sleep mode works ok rest of time but will
drop connection if left overnight.

A shutdown sometimes will get the connection reestablished and sometimes
not. Restart works best.

After 2 months I think I have found something that I can do to cause the
connection to drop. Just started using Windows Media player to view files on
my computer that I downloaded and that seems to cause the connection to drop
while I am watching a file that I have on my computer - not spooling off the
web. Did not use media player for over a month at first and problem still was
occuring so can't be that alone.

Anyone have any ideas?
--
Bob H

Fixed!! See
Subject: I've fixed the internet connection problem 5/2/2007 8:05 PM PST
In this group! Great Job Steve.
--
Bob H


"Bob H" wrote:

> Have had a Dell XPS 410 running Vista Ultimate for 2 months and it still is
> dropping my Internet connection 14 or more times a day. Have to restart to
> connect again.
>
> I have a wired connection to a AT&T 2wire router and DSL. The dropped
> connections seem to occur more often when I start up (from overnight
> shutdown) in the morning. Then during the day the connection will hold
> sometimes for 3 or 4 hours but also will drop sometimes in just a few minutes
> after a restart.
>
> I tried disenabling all automatic processes from Norton (installed by Dell),
> Windows update and anything else I could find but didn't seem to make a
> difference. I ran the Microsoft Internet connectivity evaluation tool and
> passed all except the UPnP support test which it says should not affect my
> basic connectivity.
>
> The internet connection is ok since I have a 2K machine connected right
> beside the Vista and have switched everything. 2K works all day. No dropped
> connections.
>
> When the connection is dropped and I go to Network connections and look at
> the connection it says disabled. If I try to enable it the whole process
> slows up and it takes about 2-3 minutes to tell me that it can't enable. If I
> try to go into the sleep mode at this point the computer hangs (screen blanks
> but the power switch light instead of pulsing will stay on and only thing to
> do is to disconnect from power.) Sleep mode works ok rest of time but will
> drop connection if left overnight.
>
> A shutdown sometimes will get the connection reestablished and sometimes
> not. Restart works best.
>
> After 2 months I think I have found something that I can do to cause the
> connection to drop. Just started using Windows Media player to view files on
> my computer that I downloaded and that seems to cause the connection to drop
> while I am watching a file that I have on my computer - not spooling off the
> web. Did not use media player for over a month at first and problem still was
> occuring so can't be that alone.
>
> Anyone have any ideas?
> --
> Bob H