I've been having an odd issue recently where I will be browsing or doing other online activities and then, without warning, my internet will cut out. Strictly speaking, it's difficult to even recognize the issue because my network connection box doesn't gain a little yellow triangle with an exclamation point. Instead, my browser will time out on sites, my games will d/c (after their timeout exceeds its limit), etc...
I'm running Windows 7 64-bit Home edition on a computer I built myself. It doesn't seem to be a network card issue, though it could be. Whenever this happens I go downstairs and unplug, re-plug in the router and everything works fine.
The problem is that this isn't just some old router. I used an older router previously and it would d/c quite frequently, but would always let me know it had dropped. I'd reset it, then things would be fine. I eventually switched over to a somewhat newer router (a little over a year old now) and things were great: no d/cs, no drops.
At some point, I don't remember when, I did get a couple odd "drops" where I would get a "connected, but not connected to the internet" warning, with the yellow triangle and the exclamation mark. But these happened very infrequently.
Now the problem is happening, my computer doesn't even recognize there's a problem and it happens on a daily, if not multiple times on a daily base. The router is a Netgear one, though I don't know the specific model, I can grab that tomorrow if it's needed (I'm figuring someone will likely ask).
I don't remember doing anything odd to my computer recently. Installed a webcam, Premiere Elements 8, a program named Debut and its associated programs. Pretty normal stuff. The only oddball is HotSpot Shield which is a proxy IP service. None of these "masked" disconnects happened until after that was installed, but I'm unsure if they're related. As mentioned, restarting the router seems to fix it.
Thanks for the advice in advance.
I'm running Windows 7 64-bit Home edition on a computer I built myself. It doesn't seem to be a network card issue, though it could be. Whenever this happens I go downstairs and unplug, re-plug in the router and everything works fine.
The problem is that this isn't just some old router. I used an older router previously and it would d/c quite frequently, but would always let me know it had dropped. I'd reset it, then things would be fine. I eventually switched over to a somewhat newer router (a little over a year old now) and things were great: no d/cs, no drops.
At some point, I don't remember when, I did get a couple odd "drops" where I would get a "connected, but not connected to the internet" warning, with the yellow triangle and the exclamation mark. But these happened very infrequently.
Now the problem is happening, my computer doesn't even recognize there's a problem and it happens on a daily, if not multiple times on a daily base. The router is a Netgear one, though I don't know the specific model, I can grab that tomorrow if it's needed (I'm figuring someone will likely ask).
I don't remember doing anything odd to my computer recently. Installed a webcam, Premiere Elements 8, a program named Debut and its associated programs. Pretty normal stuff. The only oddball is HotSpot Shield which is a proxy IP service. None of these "masked" disconnects happened until after that was installed, but I'm unsure if they're related. As mentioned, restarting the router seems to fix it.
Thanks for the advice in advance.