HP 9700t Mysterious Cable Broadband Fail

In the last couple of months I've had my cable broadband service go down for a couple of hours to a day or two, then come back up. I thought it was my provider, but then it got progressively worse with almost all pages needing to be reloaded when I surf the web, and then last week my computer will either not recognize ANYTHING on the other end of my ethernet wire, or tells me I have an unidentified network with no connectivity. Since my boyfriend's laptop is working ok with our cable internet, I have to assume it is my computer causing the issue.

Right now I am using dial-up service. No problems getting on, but I am still having to reload pages to connect, no matter whether I am using IE or Firefox or Chrome. The problem is temporarily corrected when I disconnect then reconnect, or reboot the computer, but then it comes back. Also the same for public wi-fi use.

Does it sound like I need a new ethernet/modem card, or could it be an issue with settings or something else? (just to rule out possibilities, yes I have tried different cables, rebooting computer, turning off & unplugging modem and computer and turning back on again, many times, it does no good)


I don't think this problem is directly related, but since the Vista Service Pack 1 came out a few months ago, my laptop won't actually correctly install it, it goes into a reboot loop stuck at 99%. I finally just had to wipe the drive, reinstall Vista again (clean, of course) and not even attempt to update with SP1. My current plan is just to try out Windows 7 when it comes out, and hope that goes better. Are the HP 9700 laptops going to be able to upgrade ok? Anyone been testing the betas?

 

Have you tried it on wireless?

 

I don't own a wireless router. I'll keep that in mind though.