Windstream → Windstream Modem Interface

I've been using WS since 2007, first with an XP box-then Vista-and now Win 8.1 and almost exclusively with Firefox. It soon became a habit to open the modem interface at 192.168.254.254 and check the SNR/Attn margins just to be sure everything was working okay since I telecommute. I would often leave that web page open in a tab for extended periods. Sometimes while using XP-Vista when I would go back to view the page I would see the "crawl message" in the upper right corner which displays the IP address had crashed, which didn't bother me much as it would come back if I refreshed the page. It seemed to me to be symptomatic of a feature that perhaps was no longer fully compatible as browsers continue to evolve and get updated.

When I started using Win 8.1, I quickly grew to like the OS and still do except for one annoying problem: If I left the computer idle and unused for a period of time (sometimes an hour, sometimes as little as 10-15 minutes), I would return to find it completely frozen with no mouse or keyboard function whatsoever and with the clock stopped at the time of the failure. A hard restart was the only thing to do. I disabled the screensaver, experimented with different power management configurations with no effect. I don't know if this is the solution, but the problem hasn't happened again since I stopped leaving the WS modem interface open. I now close it when I'm done with it. Anyone also using 8.1 experience this behavior?

I don't know the exact reason why but the GUI of the WindStream/SagemCom branded modems & Firefox don't play well together for some reason. Try using Internet Exploder when accessing the modems GUI & see if that solves your problem.

We remote into these modems all the time work & have similar problems when using Firefox but the problem is non existent when using Internet Exploder

My old Sagem modem had a horrible UI. It was broken, regardless of which browser was used. That said, if a web-page is causing your whole system to crash then either you have something else wrong with your system or the web-page is exploiting a browser/system vulnerability.