Windows XP Home loses touch with the LAN after sitting for hr or so

  • Thread starter Thread starter KWW
  • Start date Start date
K

KWW

One of my PCs on the home LAN has started to exhibit odd behavior. We used
to leave it on all the time, have great firewalls, virus, and spyware SW,
and there were no problems. Now recently, if it is left unattended for more
than 1/2 hour or an hour, it can no longer connect to the LAN until I
reboot. I tried ipconfig (/release then /renew) but that doesn't get the
connection going either, just a reboot. About the only thing that changed
was, when she was out of town for a while, I left it OFF, only turning it on
occasionally. I don't think that the CMOS battery is going out- well at
least I don't see any other odd behavior.

I checked the settings for "hibrinate", "power saver", etc. None of them is
set. The settings SEEM to be the same as on all my other PCs. It is my
wife's "hand me down" CPU.

I run a cocktail of spyware detectors, Zone Alarm, and McAfee anti-virus.

Asus P3V4X
AMD Athelon XP 1100(?) forget exactly
512 MB DDR 2700
Win XP Home Ed.

It has all the latest patches.

TIA
 
KWW said:
One of my PCs on the home LAN has started to exhibit odd behavior. We used
to leave it on all the time, have great firewalls, virus, and spyware SW,
and there were no problems. Now recently, if it is left unattended for
more than 1/2 hour or an hour, it can no longer connect to the LAN until I
reboot. I tried ipconfig (/release then /renew) but that doesn't get
the
connection going either, just a reboot. About the only thing that changed
was, when she was out of town for a while, I left it OFF, only turning it
on
occasionally. I don't think that the CMOS battery is going out- well at
least I don't see any other odd behavior.

I checked the settings for "hibrinate", "power saver", etc. None of them
is
set. The settings SEEM to be the same as on all my other PCs. It is my
wife's "hand me down" CPU.

I run a cocktail of spyware detectors, Zone Alarm, and McAfee anti-virus.

Asus P3V4X
AMD Athelon XP 1100(?) forget exactly
512 MB DDR 2700
Win XP Home Ed.
Click to expand...

I doubt this is the culprit since you say this has worked before, but make
sure power management on the network adapter (NIC) is off. Go to the
device's Properties in Device Manager and look on the Power Management tab.
Uncheck the box for "allow Windows to turn off this device when not in
use".

If that doesn't help, then:

1. You mentioned Zone Alarm. Is it possible that the problems occurred after
a ZA update (if your ZA does automatic updates)? If this sounds plausible,
check on the ZA forums for more help:

http://forums.zonelabs.org/zonelabs/

2. Uninstall the NIC and swap it out for a known-working one. If the one in
use is onboard, disable it in the BIOS and add a PCI NIC. A NIC costs $5-20
for a basic one so this isn't a big expense.

Malke
 
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