Erratic Connection

[tomedcollins]

About a week ago, I started having problems with my PC's internet connection - it'll work fine for a few seconds, then seemingly be unable to receive data for anything up to approximately 30 seconds, then work fine again for a few seconds, then be unable to receive anything for a while again .... and so the cycle keeps going.

I thought it might be a problem with my ISP, or cable modem, or router, but then I tried the internet on my housemate's computer and it's fine on that machine even though his connection comes through the same modem and router as mine.

I tried using a different network cable but to no avail.

What's even weirder is that I never seem to have problems downloading my e-mails ... it's like the problem is with Internet Explorer or something, but I don't even know if that's possible. A full virus scan revealed nothing ... I'm stumped. I suppose I could try a new network card but if that doesn't solve the problem I'll have ended up wasting money on a part I didn't need.

Thanks in advance for any help or ideas that anyone can give me.

[JPMiller]

Try Firefox to test whether its IE or something else...

[tomedcollins]

OK, now I'm totally and utterly out of my depth...

Basically, the above problem went away by itself and I thought no more of it, believing it must have been something to do with the ISP. However, a few days later it came back and so I rung my ISP's tech support for help.

Now, the good news is that the tech support guy cured the problem. The bad news is that his solution only did so for my computer, leaving me with an irate housemate who can't access the internet on his machine anymore.

What the tech support guy told me to do was take my router out of the equation, and instead connect directly from the modem to my PC. He also told me to go to the LAN settings under tools/internet options/connections in IE and tick both the 'use a proxy server for your lan' (as well as giving me specific address and port settings' and 'bypass proxy server for local addresses' boxes. The final piece of advice that I was given was to 'take a look at my router' (I did - it was still where I'd left it, looking much the same as it always has).

So ... I realised that my problems seemed to coincide with installing IE7 (my housemate still has IE6 ... maybe that's why his connection was fine?), and so tried Firefox as JPMiller advised. I found that in order to get a decent connection I had to enter the same address and port settings that NTL tech support gave me for IE7. Conversely, if I removed those settings from IE7 I could no longer get a decent connection using that browser which, to my logic, seemed to refute the tech support guy's idea that my router was the problem - I mean, I proved that I have problems whether or not the router is connected.

As for my housemate not being able to get a connection ... well, when I plugged his computer directly into the modem instead of mine I found that I couldn't get any connection at all on his PC, not even a slow one. Even entering the same LAN settings as I'd done in my IE and Firefox options didn't solve the problem.

And that's it. Like I said at the start I'm totally out of my depth here, so if anyone's got any ideas about what exactly is going on then I'd be extremely grateful to read them.