Extremely weird problem (I think)

[valouris]

Alright, here is the deal. I am a proud owner of a 2mbps dsl line that works with PPPoE. I have the Level One wbr3460a as my wireless router, and I use the wireless adapter that came with it to connect to my pc. For the sake of my problems, I also connect my laptop to the router through an ethernet cable.

Here is the problem, and below are details you might wanna know, and things that I have tried. Extremely often, my desktop (which connects to the internet through the wireless adapter) semi-loses connectivity to the internet. Let me explain. When I turn it on, usually things are just fine, all the webpages open, messenger works, torrents work etc. However, after a brief period of time sometimes, while the messenger still works and torrents too, the browsing part gets a bit drunk. In both firefox and ie, it can only open the homepage (whichever I set it to really, in a moment of desperation I surfed just by changing the homepage to whatever link I wanted to click), while when I continue to surf (open new tabs, click some links) it doesnt do anything, just loads indefinetely, until it tells me that I should connect to the internet (all the while the torrents are downloading and I am speaking to people through the messenger)! Sometimes after a while I cant open any webpage and all internet things are unable to work (messenger and torrents). Now, while this problem exists in my desktoop pc, my laptop has no problem at all. However the same problem arouses sometime in the laptop too, but after a while it goes away if I have observed correctly.

I have updated my router's firmware to the latest version, I have used different drivers for the wireless adapter, and I formatted like a good kid, cuz I suspected foul things in my desktop pc, yet the problem persists. Also, everything works perfectly when I use a simple usb modem that came with the connection. I am really desperate and I need some help on this, I hope you can help me find my problem.

Thanks in advance.

[mjc]

One of the possibilities is that you are losing DNS before losing the rest of the connection. Torrents don't require DNS lookups, and once you connect to the IM system, it doesn't either.

Right after the disconnection occurs open a command prompt and type ipconfig /all (there is a space between the e and the /). Post the output here...

[valouris]

Ok this is the result on my desktop when the problem exists.

http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/5951/forumthinguq5.th.jpg (http://img154.imageshack.us/my.php?image=forumthinguq5.jpg)

And this is the result on my laptop (connected through ethernet) when everything works fine.

http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/5046/forumthing2le6.th.jpg (http://img154.imageshack.us/my.php?image=forumthing2le6.jpg)

[mjc]

I find it interesting that on the desktop all the info appears in English and the Latin alphabet, but on the laptop, at least the lease dates are in Greek...is the laptop 'localized'?

It seems that your router is providing DNS for your machines, so if it is dropping DNS from the ISP, the router would need to be checked...the connection between the router and the troubled machine seems 'intact'.

Also, there is the fact that the wireless connection is a USB adapter...they are notorious for connectivity problems.

What happens, when you lose connectivity, if you remove and replace the USB adapter?

[Variable]

I think MJC is right about DNS. When the problem happens again, open a command prompt and type
nslookup www.google.com

the first bit:

Server
Address:

Is whatever address your computer is asking to resolve the name.

The Non-Authoratative answer section is what, if any, the results were.

Nslookup can tell you if the DNS has been hijacked. It should match either your hardcoded DNS address or in your case the DNS address provided by your ISP. Possibly through your PPPoE connection. They should match your ISP DNS servers. It also could be the primary DNS server is wonky, you can try switching the Primary to Secondary manually from the TCP/IP... Properties... of your network card.

When any ISP posts their DNS servers people tend to tpye them in just like they appear, reversing them can send most of your DNS requests to the lesser used server...

Also check that you have not disabled your DNS Client service. This caches DNS resolves locally.

[valouris]

Thx for all your help. It seemed that the ISP had some trouble due to a server crash in Germany or sth like that that prevented access to websites from some countries but it is fixed now. So apparently, now is the "clean" problem:

Ethernet laptop connects to everything perfectly.
Wireless desktop does everything, browsers work but they cant access some websites like google.com, kotaku.com, international ones, while it can access gonintendo.com or ign.com, and of course greek ones. I find this really weird since the laptop can go anywhere.

p.s. the laptop dates are in greek because I set it up that way when installing windows for my parents. how did you recognize it was greek?

[valouris]

don't sweat it anymore guys, it was the f**king windows firewall, pretty weird, thanks anyway for the attention and help :D