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Hi everyone - new to the forums

Here's my problem - it has me so confused.

I recently built a new machine, new everything including the OS which is XP profession that came pre upgraded with SP2. The first weird thing I did was buy a motherboard that did not have on-board ethernet - no big deal I went and got a linksys nic-card stuck it in a PCI slot and windows took care of the rest. However my internet connection isn't working right. After I had everything installed and all the drivers were updated I restarted. Then I opened Internet Explorer (IE) and up comes - so I'm thinking great everything worked out. I close IE and finish installing some audio and video drivers. Then I go to activate windows via the internet but no connection is detected. I try to open IE again and I get a page cannot be displayed. I check my network connection and it looks fine. So I shut down and restart. After boot up I open IE and it comes up fine and I can surf around to a few other pages - then after like 5 min of surfing it stops working again. I called up my broadband provider and everything checked out on their end - they have offered to send out a tech but that will cost me and would rather try my luck on some of these forums first. Anyone have any idea whats going on?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Packet.22

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Good thread — described a new XP SP2 build with a Linksys PCI NIC that works right after boot but drops Internet access after a few minutes. The SP2 note from and the Winsock/TCP reset pointers from are relevant; below are additional, practical checks and an ordered troubleshooting workflow to narrow the cause.

  • Verify the physical layer first: check the NIC and modem/router link/activity LEDs before and after the drop; swap the Ethernet cable and try a different router/modem port.
  • Isolate hardware: move the card to a different PCI slot or try a known-good NIC (or temporarily a USB/PCMCIA NIC) to rule out a failing card or bad slot.
  • Driver and chipset: confirm the NIC is using the latest vendor driver (not just the generic XP driver) and install the motherboard chipset drivers.
  • Auto-negotiation and offloads: force the adapter speed/duplex to match the network device (for example, 100 Mbps full duplex) and disable advanced offloads/power-management features on the NIC.
  • Software interference: perform a Safe Mode with Networking or a clean boot (disable non-Microsoft startup items/services) to see whether a third-party firewall/AV or other driver is dropping the connection.

Further diagnostics: check Event Viewer for DHCP, TCP/IP, or driver errors around the time of the drop; look at the adapter’s IP details (an address starting with 169.254 means DHCP failed). If all hardware and configuration checks fail, follow ’s Winsock/TCP reset recommendation (requires elevated privileges and a reboot). If the problem persists after those steps, the most likely causes are a defective NIC or a motherboard/PCI resource issue — swapping the NIC for a replacement will be the quickest definitive test.

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Member Avatar for Packet.22

These two links would be great to check out too... it could be the winsock keys messing up in windows xp....

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