Windows 7 Network dropping - Advice needed please!

sodennis

New Member
I have a two computer home network. The issue I am having is that the internet keeps dropping out about every 20-30 minutes or so. It only cuts out for 10-20 seconds, and doesn't require a restart of the modem or router. Its annoying though because it will time out whatever page I'm viewing or boot me off whatever game I'm playing.

Details: The problem seems to occur more at night oddly enough. Sometimes the connection drops from both computers simultaneously, sometimes it drops from just one of them. Both machines are running Window 7 Pro (legit copies), and connected via ethernet to a Linksys WRT54G Router, which is connected to a Webstar cable modem.

I thought that maybe somebody was mooching my wireless in the apt complex (even though its secured) so I tried disabling wireless access, but this hasn't fixed the problem. I called the cable company and they claimed things were fine on their end, but its Charter Comm and I hate them with every fiber of my being. I'm going to update my router firmware when I get home from work, but I updated it like 2-3 months ago so I'm pretty sure its up to date. This problem just started about 2 weeks ago.

I looked on the boards and it seems that Windows 7 has some network issues, but I'm not sure if it is really OS related because both computers usually drop at the same time. Although Charter denies it, I feel certain it is on their end. I'm in the mountains and we've had over 100 inches of snow this year, do you think water/ice is affecting the line somewhere? Thanks in advance for any help/support/advice!
 
I have a two computer home network. The issue I am having is that the internet keeps dropping out about every 20-30 minutes or so. It only cuts out for 10-20 seconds, and doesn't require a restart of the modem or router. Its annoying though because it will time out whatever page I'm viewing or boot me off whatever game I'm playing.

Details: The problem seems to occur more at night oddly enough. Sometimes the connection drops from both computers simultaneously, sometimes it drops from just one of them. Both machines are running Window 7 Pro (legit copies), and connected via ethernet to a Linksys WRT54G Router, which is connected to a Webstar cable modem.

I thought that maybe somebody was mooching my wireless in the apt complex (even though its secured) so I tried disabling wireless access, but this hasn't fixed the problem. I called the cable company and they claimed things were fine on their end, but its Charter Comm and I hate them with every fiber of my being. I'm going to update my router firmware when I get home from work, but I updated it like 2-3 months ago so I'm pretty sure its up to date. This problem just started about 2 weeks ago.

I looked on the boards and it seems that Windows 7 has some network issues, but I'm not sure if it is really OS related because both computers usually drop at the same time. Although Charter denies it, I feel certain it is on their end. I'm in the mountains and we've had over 100 inches of snow this year, do you think water/ice is affecting the line somewhere? Thanks in advance for any help/support/advice!

for wireless debugging Xirrus Wi-Fi is a great tool, you can check your signal strength and see if your sharing channels in a busy wifi area ?

download and run the tool, hit the windows key and type snip into the search, run that and post the screenshot here ?
 
Assuming as you say, the computers are using a wired ethernet connection and you've disabled wireless on the router. Please if you can tell us what steps you take immediately following the drop to re-establish the connection? Test and make sure that when the internet drops, that you internal network is still working, ping the machines back and forth. It may be a simple work around like disabling IPv6 in the properties of your network adapters on both machines and possibly hard coding a DNS server in the properties of IPv4 for both NICs on both machines. Some routers have some issues with IPv6 and also some routers seem to have some problems with DNS forwarding to resolve this you can often use public DNS servers like Googles at 8.8.8.8 preferred and 8.8.4.4 alternate. See if that helps at all. And keep us posted.
 
I see you're using a Linksys modem and/or router. I had some issues with such devices in the past.

When you say the connection drops, what actually drops? Have you tried running ping queries in the background and on a valid external IP (-t switch allows forever querying)? If the connection drops from your perspective but the external peer remains accessible to ping queries, then your DNS resolution fails. Probably on the router.

Hth.
 
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