Hi everyone - new to the forums

Here's my problem - it has me so confused.

I recently built a new machine, new everything including the OS which is XP profession that came pre upgraded with SP2. The first weird thing I did was buy a motherboard that did not have on-board ethernet - no big deal I went and got a linksys nic-card stuck it in a PCI slot and windows took care of the rest. However my internet connection isn't working right. After I had everything installed and all the drivers were updated I restarted. Then I opened Internet Explorer (IE) and up comes msn.com - so I'm thinking great everything worked out. I close IE and finish installing some audio and video drivers. Then I go to activate windows via the internet but no connection is detected. I try to open IE again and I get a page cannot be displayed. I check my network connection and it looks fine. So I shut down and restart. After boot up I open IE and it comes up fine and I can surf around to a few other pages - then after like 5 min of surfing it stops working again. I called up my broadband provider and everything checked out on their end - they have offered to send out a tech but that will cost me and would rather try my luck on some of these forums first. Anyone have any idea whats going on?

Wow, thats crazy... so it worked temporarily and then fails? I am sure you tried just about everything, but have you tried a different nic? They are relatively inexpensive, i would try either a friends, a spare one sitting around, or go buy a really cheap one, to see if your linksys nic is the problem. If this doesnt help, try reinstalling the drivers (or maybe do this before you try a new nic)

If that doesnt work... i would try maybe a new pci slot? Maybe ( i dont see how it could be) it is a power fault with the slot... haha very unlikely. Just throwing suggestions out!

Goodluck

JonnyBlaze