Question

WinXP randomly drops network connection

Asked by: hopperp

I have Windows XP Pro and use it to host a personal email account and images and the like when I post to message boards, etc., and I'll occasionally remote connect from work to email myself a file or something.  Nothing all that major, but I've got enough going on that I tend to know, even while I'm away from home, when my computer goes down.

Well, my computer recently began losing awareness of its network connection during the day while I'm at work.  When I come home, something as simple as checking the "Show icon in notification area when connected" option under the properties page for my network connection will wake up the connection and I'm up and running again.

The only recent change I've made is that I added another user account and the two of us will use the "switch" method to go between our own private desktops.  Other than that, nothing has changed in over a month, possibly longer.  So, even though everything appears to work fine even when I'm not the one logged in, I'm inclined to think this new setup is somehow the culprit, but I can't figure out why or what I should change to fix it.  Does anyone have any ideas?  Has anyone ever seen this or similar behavior before?

I don't expect this to be a difficult question to answer for someone for someone in the know, but I'm starting the points off at 250 because I'm anxious to get this resolved.

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Asked On
2003-10-08 at 13:28:34ID20761104
Tags

connection

,

drops

,

network

,

randomly

,

switch

Topic

Windows XP Operating System

Participating Experts
2
Points
250
Comments
9

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Answers

 

by: coolmarine24Posted on 2003-10-08 at 14:00:11ID: 9516479

can you be a little more specific? is your computer at work loosing network connectivity?? if it does what do you do to get connectivity again?? is tha tcomputer hooked up to a switch or hub?

 

by: coolmarine24Posted on 2003-10-08 at 14:08:40ID: 9516535

for now do this....click on "start" then  find the "my computer icon" right click on it and choose "properties"... in there go to the "hardware" tab and then choose "device manager" .....once there expand the "network adapters" icon ......choose right click on your network adapter and choose "properties"  ...there go to the "power management" tab and check the "allow this device to bring the computer out of standby" box..............hope that helps...let me know..thanks......seems like your pc is going to sleep mode which you can also change those settings from the desktop properties...

 

by: all4artzPosted on 2003-10-08 at 14:29:02ID: 9516681

what type of connection? dialup broadband, dsl?
does this happen when you are away for awhile and/or while you are downloading or transfering files please advise , then i will know what your problem is.
also are you connect to office on static ip?
or service provider appointed ip?

 

by: hopperpPosted on 2003-10-08 at 15:59:16ID: 9517144

coolmarine24,

The problem is only with my home computer, which is connected via router to my cable modem.

I went to the power management tab and saw that the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" option was checked, but nothing else.  I think, rather than having it go in and out of standby, I'd prefer for it not to go into standby in the first place, so I've unchecked this box for now and hopefully that'll do it.

I wonder, though, how that box got checked in the first place.  Like I said, the only change I've made recently was adding a second user and changing over to the fast user switch mode of XP.  Does it make sense that the power saver option would be reset in the midst of that change?  Not that it matters all that much... if this fixes the problem, then I'm happy!  Just trying to figure out what triggered this in the first place.


all4artz,

The connection is broadband cable and no, this hasn't happened while downloading or transferring files.  Although I have an IMAP server setup on the home computer and my email client at works checks both that email and my work email throughout the day so that there shouldn't be more than 5 minutes between each connection.  So if it's that the computer is going into a sleep mode, it would have to be ignoring this traffic.

My ip address isn't exactly static, but my ISP rarely changes it.  This strange behavior has occurred every day this week and each time I come home, I check and see that the ip address is still the same.

 

by: all4artzPosted on 2003-10-08 at 22:53:16ID: 9518564

ok see your broadband company has what you would call "sprites" in the service made to shut down your connection, making you restart the system or modem to get connection back...the reason is to keep people from using their service to run a home server or hosting on their lines especially when there is a very lot of traffic presented or when there is none at all.
call you isp and let them explain to you more about this if this seems like the problem

 

by: hopperpPosted on 2003-10-09 at 11:55:50ID: 9522879

all4artz,

I have a friend who works for my cable-based ISP and he says that they don't really care so long as you're not sucking up too much bandwidth, in which case they start by forcing you to grab another ip address.  They wouldn't be concerned with my level of usage.


coolmarine24,

So far, so good.  It looks like I just needed to change that one setting you steered me towards.  I hope you don't mind, but I'd like to give it another day just to make sure that did the trick.  If it's still working by the end of the day tomorrow, I'll assume it's fixed and award you the points.


Thanks to you both for your assistance!  I'm crossing my fingers everything's all set! :-)

 

by: coolmarine24Posted on 2003-10-09 at 12:16:47ID: 9523033

sure, no problem hopperp:-)

 

by: all4artzPosted on 2003-10-09 at 12:21:01ID: 9523060

well hop,
i tell you that the problem presist with me  and never stop and i spoke to three different isp and the all said the same thing
please get a second opinion , and ask about what sprites are

 

by: hopperpPosted on 2003-10-10 at 15:18:35ID: 9530616

Thumbs up!  Thanks! :-)

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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