Can't maintain internet connection; must restart after closing I.E

[Guest]

Have been experiencing difficulty maintaining cable internet connection.

After power cycling or restarting system, I can establish cable internet
connection, sucessfully connect to ISP and run IE and Outlook. However, if I
close those apps and then open them again, I get nothing but DNS errors in IE
and "POP server not responding" failures in Outlook. It looks like my system
is pinging, but nothing comes back...

Power cycling or restart corrects the problem, but only for a single IE
and/or Outlook session. Has anyone experienced this? Is it likely a problem
with cable/ISP, or is it sympomatic of a problem with my PC?

I've checked Task Manager to see if any apps are not responding, but nothing
shows up there. Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Rod

 

[BrianDP.]

I hear ya Rod. I have a user that has nearly exact same symptoms. I'd be
guessing maybe it IS the same problem, only he isn't explaining it as well
as you are, ie, you close the app once, and then it doesn't re-connect on
the next open, and it requires a re-start in order to get the internet layer
going again. All the rest of the network works fine. File sharing, I can
ping the gateway, but I can't "see" past it. None of my other XP
installations are doing this. My USER claims that this all started after he
did the Microsoft Updates. While I don't find that completely unbelievable,
I'd aim more toward some corruption in the TCP/IP stack, mainly it's
inability to use a gateway correctly. I don't profess to know what
Microsoft has going on under the hood, all I know is you have to keep
re-starting the car to get the radio to work.

Anyone else have any ideas on how to fix this? I too have scrolled through
the event log, through processes, and can find no reason why it shoudl act
this way.

Of course the users are hung up on this "rollback thing" which in mind,
well, I won't get into that. I don't trust it, let's just put it that way.
Anyway, they did their "rollback" and no, it didn't fix his problem.

I'm sure someone will have the magical (Hey, it's all magic to the users)
fix to this. TIA.

-BrianDP

 

[Guest]

Brian--
Thanks for the response. As luck would have it, I did install an number of
updates shortly before this internet connection bug appeared. Hard for me to
say whether that is or isn't a coincidence. Unfortunately I'm not
sophisitcated enough to recall which updates were installed. I'm quite sure
there is an installation log somewhere, but until now, there hasn't been a
need for me to going that far "under the hood." Guess I should count myself
as lucky in that respect.

Will keep my fingers crossed that some angel will spot this thread and be
able to help us connect the dots... could be this is a known issue --to
someone.
Cheers!
Rod

 

[Guest]

I'm having a similar problem to Rod, except I don't need to restart or power
cycle to reconnect to the Net. If I use the "Repair this connection" on the
XP Network Tasks menu the connection gets repaired, but it only lasts around
15 minutes. Unlike Rod, my problem is not related to any application use. I
can connect just fine with IE and open and close it and have no problems. I
also play MMORPG and can log on and off and back on it with no problems, but
I can only stay connected for a short time and then I get disconnected.

I've been digging around a bit and what I've come up with is for some reason
my DNS server connection is not being renewed. If I "View the status of
this connection" on Network Tasks menu then go to Support tab>Details button
I see information there about "Lease Obtained/Lease Expired" wherein the
expire time of the lease just happens to be 15 minutes from the time the
lease is obained.

I have tried changing the DNS Services to automatic, manual, stopped,
started and various combinations in the Admin settings and nothing seems to
make a difference. I've also tried inputting the DNS server numbers manually
on the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) properties, instead of detecting
automatically, but that hasn't helped either.

I also recently installed some Windows updates, but I don't think they are
the problem.

Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated.

gumbybrat

 

[BrianDP.]

Well, I know we're not the only ones with this. I hear it from about 5
different people. Luckily, I'm not one of the five. I sure wish I knew how
to fix this though. My users are asking me to turn off automatic updates
now. What a pickle. McAfee did that once to me, they distributed an update
to the virus def files and the next morning 1/2 the workstations (about 20)
didn't boot up. Manual or Automatic? How to know if you really NEED every
language - I'm surpised they didn't have Latin on the update list. That's
why I'd like to keep the updating in Microsoft's hands. Who knows why this
is happening? If it ain't broke don't patch it?

-B