Dropped connection

[4breezes]

I'm feeling my way along on how to ask this, so bear with me.

We have two computers sharing a Comcast Cable connection. Computer 1 is old and slow, running W2K-sp3. Computer 2 is not so old, much quicker, running W98SE. There is an occasional visiting laptop running XP. The router is a USR5462, which is now hardwired to computers 1& 2. The laptor is wireless.

Computer 1, my system, periodically looses the online connection. I can walk into my daughter's room and check her system, computer 2, and find it still has a good connection. I can usually rectify the problem by rebooting computer 1, but sometimes I must reboot the router and the cable modem. The laptop has never had a problem. The problem was greater when we tried going wireless.

When computer 1 looses it's connection, the USR icon and the popup screen say that the connection is still good. Computer 1 has a USB wireless connection, and an inexpensive NIC for the hardwire connection. The problem is the same with both the wireless and the hardwired connections.

As I see it, the problem is somewhere inside the tower on computer 1. Any suggestion or ideas? If you need more information about either system, ask away.

[Steve R Jones]

Look in device manager->network adaptor properties and disable the power management feature if there is one.

[Sterling_Aug]

Also upgrade computer 1 with Win2K SP4, all the rest of the Windows updates, then look for a new ethernet driver for the NIC.