Internet Connection Blind

Win XP Home:

My PC goes "blind" sometime when connected to the ISP. By that I mean the connection is there but it will not send or seek data from the ISP

ISP has pinged and I pinged from here, the connection is there but the PC will not respond to commands. I can reboot and all is find, maybe! At times I can download a Web Page, visit links on it, and then it will loose the seek or ask, what ever I should call that. The connection will remain. Rebooting always temporarily solves the problem

It's like the PC has changed users right in the middle of things.

I'm not at all good at finding and repairing problems. Hopefully someone can offer suggestions. If you can, please remember that I am a Senior and technical terms sometime fly past me.

 

OK - here goes as non-techie a suggestion as I can make.

Next time it happens, do the following:

click on start~run and put in cmd and press ENTER
type in ipconfig /flushdns and press ENTER

If that gives you a temporary fix, take a look Here and download / run their registry tweak to stop the behavior that is causing you problems.

If this doesn't help, post back.

And a non-techie explanation -

All the web sites you visit are known to you by name (like www.windowsbbs.com) but are know to your computer by number (sorry but can't give the address of this bbs 'cause I'm at work and our firewall won't allow a ping out to the internet).

In order to help speed internet browsing with XP, microsoft gave it a feature to store (or cache) the translation tables that will pair the name and IP address so your system won't need to look it up each time.

Problem is, the default install of XP allows caching of bad information as well as good. If you wind up with a bad match, you won't ever see the site as long as that information stays on your computer.

ipconfig /flushdns clears out the information so you get a fresh start.

The registry modification you can download from the site I listed will prevent the behavior (caching bad info) from happening in the future. It may also result in slightly slower browsing but usually not enough to notice (maybe a half-second maximum and usually less).

This caching behavior isn't by any means the only possible cause for your problem but it is certainly high on the list of suspects.

 

Thank you Sir. I will do exactly what you explained, and I will post back the result, for the good or no change.

I don't have any idea what I am doing except for what you described and have full confidence you are leading me in the right direction.

 

Newt, Your fix was the proper one looks like. Since I did the things you mentioned in your post, I have not had a single instance of the original problem. Wish I knew more to understand what I did!!! Anyway it now works properly and again I thank you for the post and valuable information.