Extremely intermittent net connection

[bugbeak]

Hi. I've had this problem in Win XP as well, and I'm posting this here cuz obviously, I'm running Win 2000 Pro SP4.

As the title says, I am having a problem with my internet connection. I'm on cable, and I'm not on a router eithter. It's just the cable modem, an Ethernet cable, and my laptop.

Here's what happens when the net goes down. These are the LEDs on it, not including power: USB, PC, TX, RX, and RDY. On a good day, the PC, RX and RDY LEDs are on and very occasionally blinking, with the TX LED blinking every now and then depending on the activity. Now, the TX LED is almost always on, then it goes off. About 20 seconds later, all the other LEDs go off, and a few more seconds later, they come back on, in this order: PC, RDY, RX/TX (BTW, USB is never on because this modem isn't hooked up via USB). On the PC, I cannot load up any webpages and I'm disconnected from any IM services I have on at that time.

Tech support dropped by my place a few times, and every time they came by, they said it was a virus that was affecting my net connection. NAV hasn't turned up anything suspicious, however.

Any clues? This is severly dropping my productivity rate and giving me lots of angst as well. :?:

[DMR]

Did the techs even bother to try a replacement modem? Any idea what led them to tell you it was a virus?

[Mike Feury]

It's probably worth your while running another A-V like AVG and a couple of anti-malware programs like AdAware and SpyBot, just to more or less eliminate it being a problem on your side.

Do you notice this happening more often at particular times? Cable connections degrade when more users are online in your locality, so morning/day time would likely be worse than evening/night.

Do you know how far you are from the cable source? There could be a problem 'up the line' from your house. I had a few months of that in our last place. We were at 'the end of the line' and it took the techs a long time to locate the problem.

Have you talked to neighbors using the same cable? Their experience should indicate whether it's a general cable problem or something with just your part of it.

Check using another cable from the modem to your PC, should be Cat5 or Cat6 grade cable. As DMR said, ask them to try another modem.

Connection problems can be a PITA to identify, you really need to work by elimination to try and isolate where the problem is. Good luck :)

[qt 3.14159]

I had the exact same thing, and when I called the cable company, they said it was something wrong with the cables in my house. They wanted to send someone out to check it, but I wound up fixing it myself by changing the cable from the wall to the modem.

[bugbeak]

I've done what Mike Feury suggested -- to go through elimination -- and I've noticed something very strange, yet consistent. When I open P2P programs or something else that involves lots of downloading or uploading, the connection craps out. When I'm just surfing the web or logging into messenger programs, the connection doesn't crap out as much, if at all. My guess is the NIC crapping out on me.

I've tried replacement cables and tech support dropped by with a different modem; because of time issues they couldn't fudge around with the different modem as much as I did, and I also noticed this same occurence with the other modem.

Any other suggestions? Since this is a laptop, maybe I should go out and pick up a PCMCIA NIC.

[alc6379]

I've done what Mike Feury suggested -- to go through elimination -- and I've noticed something very strange, yet consistent. When I open P2P programs or something else that involves lots of downloading or uploading, the connection craps out. When I'm just surfing the web or logging into messenger programs, the connection doesn't crap out as much, if at all. My guess is the NIC crapping out on me.

I've tried replacement cables and tech support dropped by with a different modem; because of time issues they couldn't fudge around with the different modem as much as I did, and I also noticed this same occurence with the other modem.

Any other suggestions? Since this is a laptop, maybe I should go out and pick up a PCMCIA NIC.

Are you running Windows XP SP2? I had the same problem as this. The only thing I could do to solve it is back up my data, reformat, and reinstall back down to XP SP1a.

[bugbeak]

Are you running Windows XP SP2? I had the same problem as this. The only thing I could do to solve it is back up my data, reformat, and reinstall back down to XP SP1a.

I'm back to Win XP SP1 and I did install SP2, only to have to roll back to SP1 because with the firewall enabled, I can't do ANYTHING. I've made exceptions with programs I use frequently, like Firefox, Messenger, etc, yet I cannot access the Net whatsoever. If you can help out with this, I'll go reinstall SP2.

[alc6379]

I'm back to Win XP SP1 and I did install SP2, only to have to roll back to SP1 because with the firewall enabled, I can't do ANYTHING. I've made exceptions with programs I use frequently, like Firefox, Messenger, etc, yet I cannot access the Net whatsoever. If you can help out with this, I'll go reinstall SP2.

I can't really help out with SP2, but what I'm suggesting is that you might need to completely reinstall. I tried rolling back as well, but I still had the same problems afterwards. :(