Internet connectivity issues with SXPS

Since day one I have had intermittent drops in my internet connection. Dell ways always claiming that the problem was with my router even though 4 other devices could connect and stay connected while this machine couldn't. The diagnostics in IE8 sometimes can fix the problem sometimes can't, often I have to disconnect, wait for the wifi to see the network again then try several times until it reconnects. I have an Intel 5100 wifi card and after doing a bunch of searches early on I have tried different drivers but nothing seems to work 100% and it seems it often degrades over time. This got me thinking it has something to do with Vista and or IE8 upgrades. Then I found a few posts of people using a dual boot and only had issues with this card in Vista. Currently IE8 will say it can't display the page about 30% of the time but now often just hitting refresh will work. Also pages seem to be loading much slower. I am pretty close to blowing this thing out and starting fresh but I am concerned I will just end up in the same place if I do all the Windows updates. Any suggestions on how to actually fix this?

 

is any other software running? such as Utorrent?

 

Try other browsers like firefox, chrome ?

 

Try pinging your router's IP address continously while browsing the internet, and check if there are any packets lost.
That would be a good start to check if the wifi connection is the actual cause of your problem.

 

I had the same problem, i get random disconnection while my other computers are connected w/o any problem.
Updating your intel wifi card driver to the latest one would fix the problem I believe.
http://www.intel.com/support/detect.htm

 

No torrent running...no other programs open. Have tried Firefox but get the same thing, if IE8 starts having problems FF will follow. I have updated to the latest drivers once before from Intels site and this worked until recently and things have gotten really bad in the last week or so. So I tried updating again and so far it hasn't done anything but I will try your link to see if it comes up with something different.

I could ping the router but would this tell me if it is the wifi or could it still be a conflict in Vista causing the machine to not respond as it should so it appears as if the wireless isn't working. I should also mention lately I will have IE8 and FF sit there saying they are not responding then recover in a minute or so.

 

Had to load the page 4 times to get the script to test the drivers to open. The rest of the page would load normally then say in that small window that windows can not display this page. But once it was up I ran the script and found the driver is the latest.

 

One other option would be to disable wireless on your laptop, and connect it to the router directly using cable for a couple of hours.
That way you can rule out everything else but wireless.

 

Sorry should have mentioned this before but forgot I did try this but got mixed results. I still got a few "this page can not be displated" messages but not as frequent. This was the other reason I was leaning towards a software conflict.

 

In which case it doesn't look like WiFi issue at all.

Check your proxy settings, set your card to static IP and start using openDNS servers.
I would also advise you to scan your pc for viruses and malware, as they might cause that sort of behaviour.

 

I think I will try the test again with the machine being hard wired but this time I will make sure the wifi is not just off but disabled. I have done a few scans and have NIS2010 running so I would hope I am OK on that front but if you have a suggestion on a good scan site let me know.

As for your other suggestion...I have no idea what you are talking about. I am not sure what openDNS servers are.

 

I had similar problems, this is what I did:

(assumes Windows Vista OS)
Goto "Start", "Control Panel", "Network and Sharing Center", under "Tasks" select "Manage wireless networks", on the toolbar select "Adaptor properties". This should bring up a window titled "Wireless Network Connection Properties". Select the "Networking" tab. Then uncheck the item that says "Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6)", and press the "OK' button.

 

NIS2010 is quite good. You can also give Malwarebytes a try - it's free, and very, very good in fight with trojans/malware.

 

Thanks for all the help guys...will do some more testing and report back.