Mysterious Disconnections

[Guest]

I have an older Dell C600 laptop running XP SP2. Its using a DSL modem to
connect to the Internet. This modem is shared with several other PCs via a
small router, which also provides DHCP service. Sometimes in the middle of
an Internet session, this laptop will start reporting that a web page is not
available offline, at which point it offers to reconnect, but only via its
rarely used internal modem.
I find this behavior very puzzling, since the desktop machines on the same
LAN can still access the Internet through the DSL modem without a problem.
Rebooting, even completely shutting down, doesn't always help. Eventually,
the problem seems to go away, without explanation.
Can anyone tell me what is going here? Is there a way to force it to
reconnect through the DSL modem? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Hans Le Roy]

Hi Leon,

I have an older Dell C600 laptop running XP SP2. Its using a DSL modem to
connect to the Internet. This modem is shared with several other PCs via
a
small router, which also provides DHCP service. Sometimes in the middle
of
an Internet session, this laptop will start reporting that a web page is
not
available offline, at which point it offers to reconnect, but only via its
rarely used internal modem.
I find this behavior very puzzling, since the desktop machines on the same
LAN can still access the Internet through the DSL modem without a problem.
Rebooting, even completely shutting down, doesn't always help.
Eventually,
the problem seems to go away, without explanation.
Can anyone tell me what is going here? Is there a way to force it to
reconnect through the DSL modem? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Some program on the laptop is configured to use an obsolte modem connection.
Check the settings of the internet-enabled programs that are running at that
moment. In IE, Tools, Internet Options, Connections, delete all connections
that no longer exist.

Also, make sure you have no nasty dailers on your machine. Spybot
(www.spybot.info) is nice tool that will help you.

Kind regards

Hans

 

[Robert Aldwinckle]

I have an older Dell C600 laptop running XP SP2. Its using a DSL modem to
connect to the Internet. This modem is shared with several other PCs via a
small router, which also provides DHCP service. Sometimes in the middle of
an Internet session, this laptop will start reporting that a web page is not
available offline, at which point it offers to reconnect, but only via its
rarely used internal modem.
I find this behavior very puzzling, since the desktop machines on the same
LAN can still access the Internet through the DSL modem without a problem.

Rebooting, even completely shutting down, doesn't always help.

So, have you tried turning off the router?

 

[Guest]

I've deleted the dial-up connection completely now, since I really never use
it anymore. The DSL connection seems to be working fine right now, although
what actually did force it to reconnect was the TRACERT command. I first
PINGed www.microsoft.com, watched it timeout, then typed TRACERT
www.microsoft.com, and it went through. After that, it all worked.

But a few minutes ago, IE detected a problem and I was directed to download
and run ClearIECache.msi, which I have now done. I'll see if it stays stable
this way. Thanks for the response, I think killing the dial-up connection
did help.