Unreliable web access

Hi all,

My web browsing is ridiculously unreliable. I suspect this is a software problem at my end (see details below for my reasoning), but try as I might I can't work out what it is. Browsing with Firefox will generally work reasonably well for a while, but after a few minutes of use, clicked links stop responding, and I have to hit refresh (sometimes two or three times) to get new pages to load. Often, after a little more time, the clicked links will not load at all. Usually, I am faced with a blank page before clicking refresh; sometimes Firefox presents me with a picture from my browsing cache.

The problem is significantly worse if Internet Explorer is used. IE usually becomes unusable after about a minute.

The speed of the connection appears to be reasonable, however. Downloads (even large ones) work pretty well once they get going, though it is often necessary to click the link a couple of times before the download starts. Streaming audio and video is also fine once it gets going. (BitTorrent downloads aren't great, but I think this is due to my ISP's bandwidth throttling). The problem only appears to be with http.

It should be noted that I get the same non-responsiveness when I access my router's http-based setup. This does not occur when I use a different PC to do so!

I'm running:
- Windows XP Home SP2
- Firefox 2.0.0.9
- IE 7
- Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall 4 (the problem continues when this is switched off)
- AOL (Kaspersky) Active Virus Shield (the problem continues when real-time protection is switched off)
- Linksys WAG54G ADSL router attached by ethernet cable

I don't think this is a hardware problem, because:
1. downloads and streaming work
2. web browsing works fine through the router using a laptop connected wirelessly
3. web browsing worked fine when I ran a Linux boot-from-CD distro
4. POP mail seems to be OK

Other things I've tried, without success:
- virus/spyware scans
- changing my firewall (it was previously ZoneAlarm)
- disabling router firewall
- going through running services/processes and disabling everything non-essential
- pinging the router (using the -t suffix) is not producing any dropped packets
- reinstalling Firefox
- playing with network card and router settings

I've been suffering from this for some time, and it's really starting to annoy me. Before I do a clean reinstall (and I fear I'm not going to have the requisite entire weekend free until after New Year!), can anyone suggest any alternative possible solutions?

Thanks in advance for your help,

Gareth

 

Hi zacchaeus and welcome to MGs,
A couple more things that you can try to rule out hardware.
Try a different ethernet cable and try a different port on the router.
Also, does machine the act the same if you are in Safe Mode with Networking? This takes a lot of the software out of play.
(Tap F8 at boot up for this option.)