Problems connecting to the Internet

I have two computers in my home hard-wired through the Verizon FIOS Internet service. Over the past month, I've been experiencing difficulty connecting to the Internet on ONE of these computers. I contacted Verizon and they had me change my Ethernet cable, reset my router, and switch ports in the back of my router.

Only resetting my router worked, and even then I only regained access to the Internet temporarily. Just when I thought I had the connection restored, I'd lose it again. All this time, I also received a reappearing/disappearing pop-up window in the lower right-hand corner of my screen that said: "Local Area Connection. A network cable is unplugged." I'd get this message even when I had access to the Internet and my Ethernet cable was clearly plugged in.

Finally, Verizon concluded that it must be a problem with the Network Card on the bad computer. They said that the router was not the problem because if it were I'd have trouble connecting to the Internet on BOTH computers, not just one.

So Dell (my computer manufacturer) visited my home and installed a new Motherboard, which had the Network Card on it, they said. It made no difference. I continued to have the same problems connecting to the Internet.

I called Dell back, explained the issue, and they said that it must be a software problem since installing new hardware (the Motherboard) had not worked. They recommended doing a System Restore to my computer to wipe everything clean. I called Verizon and they recommended the same thing.

And that's where I stand now. I haven't done a System Restore yet because contrary to what I've said above, my Internet is currently working. One of the customer service representatives at Dell also mentioned that it might be an issue with my McAfee VirusScan/Firewall.

Any thoughts or suggestions in regard to this problem would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

Steve,

No, the problem occurs when I'm using the computer.

 

Connections Dropping.

I am Having the Same Prob as Steve. The Wife's PC connects and stays connected, My Machine Connects at Logon and drops about 10 min after if i am using the PC or not, I too tried the Pwr Management Fix but it has been turned off all along. This just started happening after the last batch of MS updates. Before that i had no problems. My question for Steve is if he is Using a Gigalan card, I have read about issues with Gigalan cards before and My Wifes PC has a Gigalan card but only linked at 100 mb. My Machine is Linked at a Gig. (My Hub only has one Gig Port)

Any help is appreciated as i am just about out of patience. It was working sweet as pie before the last updates now it drops constantly. I have tested it with Outlook open checking mail, MSN Msnger open and browser is open reading pages thinking it maybe it was a firewall issue, and the connection drops before long for all. I either have to hit the repair connection button in Local are Connection, or re-boot completely to get my connection back.

Any info on Gigalan Problems and fixes would be a great help.
Thanks

 

Might be an MTU issue. Sometimes some networks card cant work with some routers regarding MTU size. Normal MTU size on win xp is 1500, an adsl line have 1492 i think. Try downloading TCPotimizer from speedguide.net and set the MTU to 1300 or something, just to see if it helps.
http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php