DSL/ethernet card making PC UNSTABLE?

Hi i just recently got an ethernet card and upgraded to DSL. Something about my connection is wrong and my system has become very unstable:

When i access the internet i get a message in the connection window that says "cannot find gateway" but it manages to connect anyway. I know something is wrong because the little icon in the system stray that represents the modem has one yellow screen and one green screen, instead of two green screens. It's the top screen that's yellow.

My ISP's crappy suport team said that that isn't normal but that if i can connect i shouldn't worry about it. so they're not helping.

I know somehting is wrong with my connection because i get oddly long pauses before the page connects and loads...even though it loads very quickly once it does connect.

Also , Outlook and intnet explorer keep thinking i'm OFFline and ask me to connect , with the old dial-up window , i just click on "ignore" or "try again" and then it falls back on the dsl connection. It doesn't do this every time thought , wich is wierd. Firefox has no prbs.

Aslo, my system has become VERY unstable, it's crazy. Once i got a "WINDOWS DEVICE IOS error" on boot up. But then re-booted in safe mode, de-fragged, rebooted normally and the problem went away. AND once on boot up i got a message: "HARDWARE MONITOR found an error. Enter Power Setup menu for Details" and ended in up in some crazy thing called "AWARD Bios SETUP UTILITY". i just exited and rebooted and it resolved itself. I've also gotten a few blue screens on boot-up.

But usually i just boot-up use the high-speed, and the system get unstable after about a day of use , before needing to be re-booted, usually after a freeze.

I also recently upgraded my RAM if that might be related.

Any ideas? Is this the right forum for this even? Is it more of a driver or software issue?

win 98SE
ENL832-TX + 10/100M Fast Ethernet Network Adapter
VIA apollo KT133 chipset
PC133 / VC133 DRAM
800mhz

 

you might try updating the driver for the ethernet card and see if that helps.

 

looks like there was a new driver for my etherenet card, but changing it didn't help:

In the device manager i used to have this list, under 'network adapters'

10/100M PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter
Dial-Up Adapter
Dial-Up Adapter #2 [VPN Support]
Efficient Networks P.P.P.o.E Adapter [NTSP3]
Microsoft Virtual Private Networking Adapter

i checked for an update on the first one with windows update and they changed it to:

Realtek RTL8139/810X Family PCI Fast Ehternet NIC

even though the card was from "Encore"

But it didn't work, the icon still shows one yellow screen, the connections still wierd and my system is still unstable.

anybody have any other ideas?

 

does your motherboard have a built in ethernet card if so disable it in your bios.

 

yellow screen in modem icon

no my motherboard does not have a built in ethernet card card. I had to buy a seperate one, a "ENL832-TX + 10/100M Fast Ethernet Network Adapter"

But does anyone know why the icon for the modem connection would have one yellow screen.

Or what "could not find gateway" whould mean in the connection window would mean?