Internet disconnects and then XP freezes on shutdown screen

I've seen a few similar topics about freezes on the shutdown screen, but not similar enough for me to avoid making a new topic. If you feel I am incorrect, please feel free to close the topic.

I've been having a persistant but unfortunately somewhat random problem lately. When playing an online emulator, Mame32k, I am sometimes disconnected from the emulator. Normally this is no problem, but lately what then happens is that the my network connection itself totally disconnects. I can access absolutely nothing. There is also absolutely no way I have discovered to restart the connection. I am using a comcast DSL connection, and even if I restart the cable modem manually or connect it to a different USB port, it does nothing. This would all be bad enough, except that when I then try to restart/put on standby/shut down my computer, XP freezes on the "Shutting down" screen. To make sure it wasn't just being slow I left it on for half an hour, and it was definitely frozen, forcing me to hard shutdown. The problem only seems to happen when playing MAME32k, but the program itself shouldn't be completely at fault, since I've used it on another computer for years without incident and the problem has only started recently on this computer.

The problem with testing this is that the disconnect occurs randomly when playing online, which isn't something that's easy to test repeatedly. Regardless, any help would be greatly appreciated since this is getting rather frustrating. I have run all the tests in the "READ & RUN ME FIRST Before Asking for Support" topic and they did not seem to fix the problem. I have included a report on the computer if it would help anybody. Thanks for your assistance.

 

Bump in mingled desperation and hope