Very vexing problem...connection keeps dropping

[VaeVictus]

Hi guys, I'm having a problem maintaining a stable internet connection.

I guess I'll just start from the beginning. Recently I upgraded my old 2200 XP with Gigabyte mobo and 1 gig pc 2700 RAM to an AMD 64 3200 w/ Epox EP-8kDAj and 1 gig pc 3200 ram.

As part of the upgrade I took out my old AOpen 10/100 network card because my new mobo has an onboard ethernet port.

Everything worked fine. But I guess that was too good for me and I decided to format the drive and reinstall XP.

So after that reinstall I decided to mess around in the services.msc. Bad idea. So next I formatted a 5 gig partition for XP and reinstalled it there.

Now I am getting the most frustrating computing experience I have had in a long time. Basically my internet connection drops every minute or so for around 2 minutes, then it starts back up again. It doesn't exactly drop as in cut off 100% because I can be in the middle of a d/l and the d/l will pause and resume a minute later. But webpages will not load during that period. Anyone who has ever had a networking adapter conflict knows what I am talking about. It seems like 2 networking adapter are competing but the only networking device connected is that onboard LAN adapter (the aopen was removed from the computer with the upgrade).

When I go to control panel -> system -> hardware profiles -> network adapters -> I see the onboard adapter and the 1394 port on my soundblaster "gamer" card. Uninstalling the adapter seems to make no difference and removing the entire card makes no difference.

Additionally, this problem happens right off the bat. That is to say, as soon as the reinstall is done and I go *immediately* to Windows Updater i get problems.

So far I have:
Formatted/ XP reinstall
Restarted the computer
Restarted the Cable Modem
Uninstalled the adapter
Updated the Epox drivers
Installed all XP critical patches from the MS updater

I guess this could be my ISP but it doesn't really feel like it. (It's Adelphia, Los Angeles)

Can anyone clue me on what may be wrong? Thanks for reading this!!

 

[Buzzman151]

this may sound dumb, but first off, have you tried unplugging your router and/or modem for a couple min? I had simlar problems as you and as long as I did that, the problems would go away for a week or so.

 

[sjgmoney]

Seen lots of similar psts here, do a search on it. One thing that has ocme up is the power management features of the NIC make it keep cutting out.

Try thisTry this[/L]


Or this

 

[VaeVictus]

Yea Buzz, i tried unplugging the cable modem for a bit and then plugging it back in, nothing doing.

sjgmoney, your links referenced wireless setups but I'm not on a wireless network. Thanks anyways!

 

[oldman420]

you mentioned getting into the services section and changing things what did you change?
if you did and that broke things you may have to reinstall xp i never mess with the services as it always seems to break xp somehow.
sounds like maybe a reinstall of tcpip might do it along with removing and reinstalling the nic

 

[Kilyin]

I had this same problem. It seems the 8KDA3 onboard gigabit is very finicky. It didn't like my Netgear RT314 10/100 4 port router. Someone else also reported the problem occuring with a Linksys 5 port 10/100 switch.

To test this, just plug directly into your cable or dsl modem from your PC. When I did this, I didn't get the problem, so I concluded it was the router. I upgraded to a NETGEAR Cable/DSL ProSafe VPN Firewall with 8-Port Switch, Model FVS318. Haven't had a problem since.