lost/dropped connection downloading

[aldale]

Hi,
Hope I'm posting in the right place. I'm running win98se, for as long as I can remember I have had timeout/lost connection while downloading so I've been using a download manager to get around it, main problem is I can't use d/l manager to update my av defs etc. Can anyone tell me what causes the lost connection problem, better yet, how to fix it?.
Advice much appreciated
tia

[BipolarBill]

What kind of internet connection do you have? I assume that it's a modem.

In Internet Options > Connections > [your dial-up] > Settings > Advanced, you may find that your connection is set to terminate in 20 minutes. MS made a mistake with that. Fix it if so.

You can also use a ping utility to keep your connection alive:

http://www.thefreewaresite.com/directory/Internet_Applications/Misc_Internet_App/more8.html

I liked KeePingAlive.


<pregnant pause> 4000 posts! What am I...a nut?!

[ukulele]

I think most of the interrupts I get are caused by the phone company here. When I get cut off I pick up the reciever. More times then I can count there is no dial tone for a few seconds to several minutes. All this new fancy digital switching they installed a few years back ain't all what it's cracked up to be.

[tycoonist]

I have this problem sometimes myself, and what I do is open another window and every few minutes refresh it. This keeps my Internet connection alive when I'm downloading something, because my connection stops or just disconnects.

[aldale]

Hi,

Sorry I didn't explain the problem more clearly, I am not actually disconnected, whenever I am downloading there occurs some sort of time-out/interruption and I have to restart the download, if it was resumeable then I'm ok and usually get it eventually after another couple of restarts but in the case of updating at least one of my av defs that is not resuemable the automatic update never finishes. Now here's the mystery, all of a sudden the problem has disappeared, may be down to some tweaking util or other I had been messing with, however I am due for a reinstall of my os from an disk image and I was hoping to nail this before doing so. I am on a modem btw but my isp does not auto disconnect on idle, disconnect if idle in advanced options is not enabled.
thanks again

[BipolarBill]

That dropoff could be on the server end. You can't really troubleshoot it because you cannot get to the server.

You could try a program like TJPing (http://www.topjimmy.net/tjs/tjping.html) to ping and trace route when you suspect a problem. A trace would be the thing to do.

On your end, a "full hardware" modem might help if you currently have a Winmodem. Heavy PC use might stall the modem.

Lastly, you can manually download definitions to be sure you get them.

[aldale]

Hi BipolarBill
I will try as you suggest, thanks for taking the time to help.