Vista internet issues!!

Hello,
I have a strange problem for you guys, hopefully you can help me.

I have a machine running Windows Vista (x86) Ultimate Edition SP1, if you leave the machine to idle for longer than an hour with uTorrent running it will not display any web pages, loading up both Firefox and IE7, both browsers time out to display any pages (via URL or IP) the machine can still ping external and internal IPs and can also TRACERT - it should be noted that uTorrent at this time reports upload and download activity without any problems.

Disconnecting and reconnecting the network via the terminal does NOT fix the problem, the only way to fix it is to restart the machine OR quit uTorrent and wait around 10 mins before loading a browser where you find the issue to be resolved. That last part leads me to think the problem relates to uTorrent but it's not anything I've heard of or come across before.

(It should be noted that the uTorrent use is totally LEGAL - I am doing some software development through university and have had to download several Linux distros for testing / programming although in the interests of being fair I do keep all torrents seeding for as long as possible)

Any ideas on this issue?
TRP

 

uTorrent may be using up the bandwidth. Set it up to use half or less the bandwidth.

Can you reproduce the same symptom in a new windows account?

 

Yeh same on a different user account (newly created for this test!).
It didnt make any difference setting the bandwidth limitations. I have a feeling its to do with my router (A netgear thing) and its ability to handle that many concurrent connections, what do you think?
If I were to post up the details of the unit could anyone tell me for sure?
TRP