Internet hangs every 3 minutes for about 45 seconds?

dont by any chance have your email set to check every 3 min for new mail do you ?

No, it is set for 30 mins.

Same problem via AOL, normal modem, and now broadband, but the strange thimg is if you download via gozilla, audio galaxy, napster, etc, the data flow is constant?

I believe you have something running in the background.  You will need to do the trial and error thing to find out what it is.  Shut down Windows and restart it.  Now do a CTRL-ALT-DEL and end task on everything except for Systray and Explorer.  Now start up your browser and see if it happens.
Have you checked for viruses?  Try http://housecall.antivirus.com
Do you have a firewall installed?

Thanks for advice. Tried CTRL-ALT-DEL before (with aol helpline)and still had same problem. No virus as far as I know. Got zone alarm installed, bit only put it on recently, problem evident before. Thinking about it, it seams problem started with AOL and still present even though AOL no longer installed.

Thanks for any advice.

Do you have Task Scheduler running?  If so, you should see a little icon that looks like a window with a clock in front of it in your System Tray.  (If you hold your mouse over the icon, a tool tip tell you what it is will appear.) You can then right click on it, select Open, and you will see a list of scheduled tasks.  One of these might be the Microsoft Critical Update task, where, usually every 5 minutes -- but can be set differently -- your computer will go out to the MS web site and check if a Windows Critical Update is present, for downloading.

take a look at this url concerning uninstalling AOL  http://www.techsoup.org/qod_answer.cfm?qotdid=276

The Microsoft site is very slow to respond these days, what with all the XP traffic, probably, and perhaps this is what causes your computer to hang for 45 seconds.  You would need to disable the Critical Update by uninstalling it in the Add/Remove Programs applet of Control Panel.  If you unschedule it, it turns itself on again with each boot.

Task Scheduler is not running.

Tried the link for uninstalling Aol and deleated the dial up adaptor. Problem still evident?

Tried the link for uninstalling Aol and deleated the dial up adaptor. Problem still evident?

Thanks Cyberstretch for the advice. I will try remove network stuff.

The fault has been evident via aol on a phone connection and ntl via phone and now broadband. When the internet hangs it just will not refresh or you can not open new pages, if you try all you get is blank browser page which loads after the 45 second stall. Yet if I am downloading a file I get constant data flow?

Thanks for all the advice.

When you are sending HTTP requests, even for the same page, you are generally re-requesting DNS and re-establishing a TCP connection.

However, when you are downloading a file, your DNS and TCP connections remain up until the download is finished or the connection is broken. This is probably the reason you are seeing differences between the two processes.

CyberStretch, thank you. Deleting the network stuff has stopped the problem. Thanks to everybody who helped.

Thanks CyberStretch.

Glad to be of assistance.