Intermittent Browser Outage

[DMFTodd]

Strange computer problem that has me baffled, any help?

New laptop, everything is working fine except intermittently the browser loses it's internet connection. Trying to go to any page in the browser - yahoo, google, here - gets a "wait for <website>" message. The outage can be just 5-10 seconds and then the page comes up, sometimes 30 seconds, sometimes a couple minutes, sometimes I have to reboot. Will happen several times throughout the day.

Happens to both IE7 and Firefox 2.

If I jump on another computer on my network, that computer is working fine. So it's this new computer.

If I flip over to Outlook, I can get email just fine when the browser is not working. So I'm not losing the internet connection altogether.

The utility for the wireless card shows the wireless connection still connected, signal strength excellent.

Windows XP

Any ideas?

 

[Rackhir]

Strange computer problem that has me baffled, any help?

New laptop, everything is working fine except intermittently the browser loses it's internet connection. Trying to go to any page in the browser - yahoo, google, here - gets a "wait for <website>" message. The outage can be just 5-10 seconds and then the page comes up, sometimes 30 seconds, sometimes a couple minutes, sometimes I have to reboot. Will happen several times throughout the day.

Happens to both IE7 and Firefox 2.

If I jump on another computer on my network, that computer is working fine. So it's this new computer.

If I flip over to Outlook, I can get email just fine when the browser is not working. So I'm not losing the internet connection altogether.

The utility for the wireless card shows the wireless connection still connected, signal strength excellent.

Windows XP

Any ideas?

Sounds like it could be some sort of a DNS issue. The DNS (Domain Name Server) is what your computer uses to translate EN World - D&D / Dungeons & Dragons / RPGs into it's IP address of [65.127.163.19]. Which is what the computer actually uses to connect.

It may be your computer has a virus or trojan of some sort, since those can screw with DNS, often in an attempt to get you to go to either porn sites they get a kick back from or to send you to a web site they can use to download more malware onto your machine.

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is a good package as is Spybot Search and Destroy. You should probably be using at least one if not both regardless of if your problem has anything to do with this, since they can catch and remove stuff that doesn't trigger AV software.

It could also be that it isn't configured to talk to the proper DNS server and it's having trouble for that reason.

You might want to find out what the DNS server IP address are for your ISP and manually set your DNS servers to that and see if that helps.

 

[ssampier]

DNS could be the issue. He could test by typing into the IP at the outage time and see if it works.

My experience shows that wireless nics and wireless routers can be quite flakey. I would try updating the firmware for the router. Second, try updating the driver for the wireless nic. Some people also suggest setting your wireless channel to 11.

I did all 3 things here and it's been smooth sailing ever since. I don't bother to do this at work though. The wireless AP at work cost quite a bit more, however.