Wierd internet connection problem

Firstly, hi to everyone as this is my first post.

My problem is that intermittently my internet connection *appears* to get dropped.

I say appears because anything that was connected previously continues to function properly but anything new doesn't work.

For example, I could be looking at a website and all is well, then I open a new IE window and get the 'page not found' error. If I go back to my original window, clicking on links still works. I also have a peice of software that communicates with another website, and that also continues to work when new IE windows will not. I also get the problem if that software isn't running.

At the moment I cure it by restarting the router, but that doesn't always work and is far a from ideal solution when it does.

I have XP Pro SP2, Athlon XP3000+, 1GB Ram, and connect to the internet through a Safecom SWAMR-54108 Modem/Router which in turn is connected wirelessly to mine and my kids pc's. My ISP is Tiscali 2meg broadband.

It's got me so wound up now that I'm happy to look extremely foolish if it's a simple fix or something obvious I haven't thought of.

Please let me know if there's any info that I should have provided but overlooked.

All suggestions greatly appreciated.

Thank You

 

Yes Tim, I'll try anyhting.
Going to download it now and give it a go.

In much the same way that a washing machine works perfectly when the repair man comes to fix it, I've not had the problem at all today!

Would you suggest using firefox all the time, or just see if it works when IE fails to?

Thanks for your help

 

It's finally happened again.

I've been using Mozilla since Tim suggested it, and 10 minutes ago the problem occured again.

I switched off the router, waited a minute or so then turned it on again, and here I am.

Ebuyer was the only window I had open when it happened. I couldn't get my home page to load (or any other page) in the existing window or a new window, but I could continue to look at the Ebuyer site, all the links within Ebuyer worked ok.

Any ideas anyone?

Is there any more info I can give which would help?

Thanks again.

 

You said that when it "drops" if you click a new window it says: page not displayed, but it still lets you look at links in the existing browser window.

Is this still the case? + are these links already visited links i.e. are they definitely not coming up because they are stored in your cache?

Do any other internet progs work like messenger or outlook etc?

I get random dropouts on my computer and have practically exhausted ALL avenues! If it's not my ISP then it is a conflict on my motherboard. Do you have a nvidia motherboard by any chance?

On Nvidia's own forum it is frequently mentioned:

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=4978

I have spent 6 months trying to solve my problem, updating drivers and disabling hardware/software. I used to get disconnected all the time, I still do get dropouts a couple of times a day, but it's bearable! GOOD LUCK!

 

Any programs which were working before the 'apparent' disconnection will continue to work, and that includes messenger.

I've not thought of seeing if the e-mail still works because that connects as and when, I'll give that a go later.

The links that still work are not ones that I've already visited. Is it possible that where I *might* go has been downloaded in case I want to.
Having said that though, the connection must still be up because I was watching baseball scores one time it happened and they continued to update after the problem.

My motherboard is an ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe which I think has an nVidia nForce2 chipset.

 

If you have been playing around with this problem for six months, you must be at "witts end".

Does the problem occur daily? If so, because you have almost eliminated everything, I would take my machine to another high speed connection and see if you can make it fail. You need to determine if you should focus your efforts on the machine or the network.

BTW.....I have never used anything other than IE. IMO there are no major problems with IE 6.1 that would cause anything like you are experiencing.

-Jim

 

good cyberday cool geeks
i have a problem with my modem internet conection.
its like this.
i fear that a hacker is trying to fish my conections ip adress.
please help me.
i start realising that when i conecton use to drop down from 52kbps to 31.2 kbps.
and stayed that way to.
it never moved back to 52kbps.
what must i do to stop that hacker to keep doing what he does.

it would be realy help full.

take care

 

Fukai Mori..
Have you tried a program like zonealarm to see if it really is a hacker? There is a free version of that, or there must be lots of other free progs which do the same thing.

jconstan..
Fortunately I've not been trying to figure it out for 6 months ..... yet!
I'm thinking of changing ISP's anyway.


I'm thinking it's the router as restarting that always seems to fix it whereas restarting the pc doesn't. It's just wierd how existing things connected to the internet continue to work.

My router channel is set to 11 at the moment. I'm sure It's not the wireless connection though because I've tried moving my router near to the pc and connecting through the ethernet port directly with a cable.
The problem still happened.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

One thing just occured to me though. The problem started happening about a week after I received an e-mail from my ISP (tiscali) that I was in breach of thier fair-usage policy and unless I changed my bandwidth usage they would put me on the same bandwidth with other heavy users during peak times.
Having said that, thier fair usage policy says that I would receive 3 e-mails before they changed anything and I've still just had the 1.

Could they cause what is happening? Is any paranoia justified?

 

One think in your description that I find interesting is that "old" things work but "new things" do not.

By "old things" I'm assuming they are applications that access other things on the Internet. Could it be something as simple as dropped packets and your "old things" are performing retries behind the scenes? Considering that TCP/IP is basically a connectionless protocol and packets are not guaranteed to be delivered unless the application takes care of that.

-Jim

 

I'm not 100% sure what you mean, I'm not that technically-minded, but I'll try to explain more clearly using an example.

I start a session on the internet, and open a couple of browser windows, outlook express, and a .NET based application that retrieves information from a website. All work ok.
When the problem occurs, a new browser window won't find my homepage (google). I go back to one of the original browser windows that I opened to start with and clicking on links within it works ie. the page the link was pointing to will open. If I right-click the link and choose 'open in new window' it doesn't work.
The application that retrieves info from another site is still working.
My kids will be playing an online pool game on another pc and that still works. The other pc will also not retrieve pages using a new browser window.

I've tried it without the .NET app running and it still happens. I've tried it without the kids pc on and it still happens. I've tried it on the kids pc without mine on and it still happens. I've tried using firefox and it still happens. I've tried connecting the pc to the router with a cable rather than using the wireless and it still happens. There is no apparent sympton or pattern for when it happens that I can see (although I'm far from an expert).

It's just an annoyance to me at the moment because the important thing to me is that the application that was working still works, and restarting the router solves the problem, but the longer it goes on I suppose the more irritating it will get.

Thanks for all the ideas.

 

When you get the problem and you go back to an original browser window, that you say continues to work, execute a CTL-R and tell me if the old browser window still functions normally.

A CTL-R causes the browser to RELOAD the page and not use any of the previous cached pages.

-Jim

 

Will do, I'll post back here the next time it happens.