Dropping Internet Connection

[BillW]

I'm running Vista on a Toshiba laptop and my wife has a Dell Desktop with WinXP. Both are cable-connected to a wireless router. On a fairly regular basis, when I wake up my laptop after it has been idle for a few hours, it cannot reach the Internet. If I try to use a wireless connection that cannot connect either. However, my wife's desktop will continue to connect without any problem. This has been going on for a few months; before that it never happened unless there was a power line "glitch". I have tried everything I know about to try to get the connection to begin working again and nothing helps except to unplug the power to the router and plug it in again. That will restore the connection without doing anything at all to my laptop. When Internet Explorer cannot connect it offers some diagnostics and I've tried all the possibilities there with no success.

Is there some way I can determine if this is a router problem versus a laptop problem?

Thanks, Bill

[StuartR]

What output do you get to the command
ipconfig
typed into a command prompt window?

How does this compare to the output of the same command when the laptop is working?

[BillW]

Thanks for reminding me of that command! I will attach the screen capture of that command while the network is working properly. In the next few days, after it fails again I will attach the screen capture of the failed version.

When I posted my earlier message I didn't think to mention that while the network was failing the hover text for the network icon in the Notification Area said "Access: Local Only". Also, even though my wife's PC could access the Internet thru the same router, my laptop could not see her PC on the local network. I haven't checked this out thoroughly in the past but I believe this happens every time.

Thanks, Bill

[StuartR]

...the network icon in the Notification Area said "Access: Local Only"...

When this happens, it is very probable that you no longer have a valid IP address on the laptop.

• Try looking in your settings to see if you can prevent power being removed from your network card when the PC is idle
• Make sure you have the latest device driver for your network card
• When it is in the failed state, after capturing the output of ipconfig, try the command ipconfig/renew

[BillW]

It is certainly logical to suspect the IP address but the IE diagnostics that appear when IE is unable to connect to the Internet has a "get new IP address" function and that hasn't helped in the past. I will try it using ipconfig when it fails again. I haven't been able to find the kind of setting you showed in your message. I'll check with Toshiba on the network card driver. I'll be back with more when I have it...

Thanks, Bill

[JoeP]

To see the power management settings - right click "Computer", select "Manage". Once the Computer Management applet starts click on "Device Management" in the left pane, then double click on "Network Adapters" in the right pane. Select the network adapter, right click, select "Properties". You should see tabs that are the same as what StuartR posted.

Joe

[BillW]

Ah Ha! I haven't used that technique to get to the Device Manager before but I did know about it but never thought to look there. Thanks for pointing it out. I do have the same choices that Stuart showed. I'm going to wait until it fails again and do some checking and then I'll make that change and see if it helps.

Thanks, Bill

[BillW]

OK, my laptop went into sleep mode overnight but it was connecting to the Internet OK after I woke it up this morning. However, it was not connecting to my wife's PC even though her PC seemed to be connecting to my laptop OK. BTW, this not connecting to my wife's PC happens a lot. Anyway, I rebooted my laptop and it could no longer connect to the Internet! So, the ipconfigBad.gif image is the result of my ipconfig command at that point. Then I issued the ipconfig/renew command and the ipconfigRenew.gif image is the result of that. As you can see, it did not even work, much less fix the connection to the Internet problem. At this point my wife's PC could not access my laptop, as I think would be expected. Finally, I rebooted the router and now the laptop can access the Internet. My laptop still cannot see my wife's PC -- I suspect that I'll have to reboot the laptop to fix that.

I'll go ahead now and follow the suggestions made earlier and see if that helps. If this new info suggests anything new to you, please let me know.

Thanks, Bill

[BillW]

After long delay... BTW, after not finding any other solution to this problem I changed my laptop so that it never goes into Sleep mode and now it never loses its connection to my wife's PC. I haven't had to reboot the router since I made this change!

If anyone has any further suggestions on how to solve this problem and still allow my laptop to sleep I would appreciate them.

Thanks, Bill

[hlewton]

Don't know if you have solved this or not but I had a similar problem of not being able to see other computers on my network and it turned out to be the firewall I had purchased from the company I trusted and still use for my anti-virus, anti-malware programs. For some reason, even unknown to their tech support personnel, it sporadically would not allow me to see or access some of the other computers. After uninstalling the firewall and going back to using the one built into Windows my problem was solved.

[BillW]

Thanks for the information. My problem seems to have gone away! For a while I quit letting my PC go into sleep mode and that fixed the problem but since then I have used sleep mode without having that problem. I did switch to the built-in firewall a while back and that may be the reason it seems to be OK now.

Thanks, Bill