AT&T West → I'm stumped

Okay, here's my odd little problem. Many thanks in advance to anyone who may be able to lend a hand.

First off, I know this problem is somewhere within my computer, and not with my Pac Bell DSL per se. The DSL works fine and has been pretty much trouble-free for a long time.

The problem is that after an indefinite time of constant connection, the DNS (or something related) suddenly dies. I'll be web browsing, and the first sign of trouble is a bunch of broken images showing up everywhere. Within 30 seconds or a minute, I totally lose my web browsing capability.

IM (both AOL and MSN) continues to work fine, even though I suddenly can't access anything on the Web. I must restart to regain web capabilities, and after a restart, things are always back up and running (for a while).

I'm sure there's something causing an interference or an incorrect setting somewhere, but I have no idea where or what that might be. I deinstalled ZoneAlarm but it may still have remnants in the registry. (just a guess). Has anyone heard of other programs causing these sorts of problems, i.e. Norton Anti-Virus or something of that nature?

FYI, I'm your standard Enternet/PPPOE, Pacbell dynamic IP residential customer running Win98SE. The problem occurs even on dial-up or other means of networking, so I'm fairly certain it's not a DSL thing.

Apologies for the non-technical description of the problem. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Have you tried this out yet?
»DSL FAQ

Also double check to make sure you are using the closest DNS servers:
»/forum ··· ode=flat

I'm using the latest/closest DNS servers and the DHCP searching for an address (as delineated in the FAQ) isn't the problem. If only that were it!

This isn't momentary or even temporary lapses in connectivity, but rather a total and unexpected loss. And I can only fix it by restarting, which always does fix it.

As you can see, this is something of a mystery.

Another suggestion is to switch PPPoE clients all together. You can try RASPPPoE and see if it works out.

Another excellent suggestion. It's been tried and the same problem kept happening. I'm pretty much certain that this isn't a PPPoE problem; it happens over dial-up too, which seems to indicate it's something else unrelated to DSL.

My money is on another program causing the loss of connectivity. Whether it's anti-virus software or remnants of the ZoneAlarm firewall in my registry is the mystery.

I was just hoping someone else might've experienced something similar and would have an idea on what to do. It's frustrating having to restart ten times a day. But then again, this IS windows, so...

Ok darn. Do you run adsubtract or proxomitron or any add killer pop-up killer applications? Also are you NIC drivers up to date on your card. Keep in mind if you NIC is listed as Realtek its most likely not using the right driver because Realtek only makes chipsets not cards. A manufacturers driver might be a little better.

What browser are you using?

Greywolf

I may have missed it (due to three classes of wine(, nbut I did not se a mentio nof s moden.

I don't run any proxomitron or anything else like that. The only thing that runs which has anything to do with an internet connection MIGHT be Norton Antivirus. I have IE 5.01 with the latest service packs installed. But the outages affect FTP service as well, so I'm guessing it's not a browser issue.

The wrinkle is that IM services continue to work. But they have specific ports to use. Ugh, this is so frustrating. Anyway, thanks to all who are pitching in with ideas.

Are you certain that your IM software is still working, or have they just not yet recognized a lost connection? Those usually disconnect a while after a network connection is lost.

Do you have to reboot your computer or just the web browser? If you have to reboot your computer, try pinging the PBI DNS server and see if you get a response, but do this before rebooting.
Open an MS-DOS Prompt from the Start>Programs menu, and type:
ping 206.13.29.12
You should get responses like:
Reply from 206.13.29.12: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=253

If you don't get a response, try another IP address (like your gateway address). If you do get a response like this, you have IP connectivity. Now test DNS. Replace the IP address with the FQDN of the DNS:
ping dns1-la.lsan03.pacbell.net

If you get a response, then DNS works. If no response, there's probably something wrong with your software, preventing DNS lookups. If you don't get a response from ANY pings, then there's either a hardware problem (i.e. NIC), DSL problem, or something with another piece of software, i.e. EnterNet.

We had this problem with one of the computers and found out it was the web filter/web security settings in the trend PC-Cillin anti-virus software application. We still continue running the anti virus but unchecked those two options. his computer would browse for a bit and then he would get red "X" images, and the browser would slow down to a crawl and then almost stop. the other computers were running the same software but his didn't like the PC_Cillin features for some strange reason. reboot would fix then it would happen again. I would close all apps in the background and figure that is where the problem is..narrow it down.

said by JohnnieLM:

---

..The problem is that after an indefinite time of constant connection, the DNS (or something related) suddenly dies. I'll be web browsing, and the first sign of trouble is a bunch of broken images showing up everywhere. Within 30 seconds or a minute, I totally lose my web browsing capability.

---

After playing some graphic intensive game and when you "exit" out that game, the color of your desktop kind of wash out, trending toward white, a reboot usually fix it.

When you are low on system resources, or your video card isn't resetting properly to normal screen due to the program you exit out of does not return the resources properly back to usable resource pool, fragmented screen images occur.

In other words, fragmentation of memory occurs in your case.
That could be resulted from defective memory, video card, CPU or even the motherboard itself. Do you have proper cooling in your computer system?

I will try to replace the video card first, then system memory, then CPU, then motherboard etc.

DSLXRay touched on it and I'd like to pin my guess on it too....low system resources. Try running the resource monitor before you start an online session and see if the free resources don't get really low around the same time as your problems begin.

Thanks to all who responded and pitched in with opinions. Knock on wood, I think I've gotten to the bottom of it. After doing a total uninstall of Norton Antivirus 2002, I haven't been having the same problems since. Of course, I'm now a bit more exposed to virus intrusion, but I suppose I'll take my chances.

Thanks to the one person who suggested I try that. It worked!

just some FYI to let you know you aren't the only one with this prob. I've called ASI about 200,000,000 times since Oct. 2000 (when I got my dsl) and up till a month ago.

Well what ended up happening is when I called ASI, I got a great tech on the line. He even went to the 2nd tech...didn't just make a truble ticket and pass me on. but what he ended up doing was, as he put it, get me the ip addies to the DNS servers.

This is what eh gave me:
DNS servers: 64.160.192.170 & 64.166.172.8
domain: pacbell.net

and after that, I really havn't had this prob anymore.