Internet Connection keeps going down

Chomeur

I'm sick of the Internet connection on my PC going down. It happens just about every day. Here are some diagnostics:

Chrome, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox all lose connection.

Google Drive and Filezilla seem to keep connection, strangely.

Turning my Firewall off doesn't help.

I have good wifi connectivity.

My Ethernet cable flashes green at the end of the combined modem/router and yellow and red at the PC whether I have the problem or not.

I'm using Windows 8.

Restarting the computer fixes the problem (but takes a good ten minutes).

I do have a habit of opening up to a dozen tabs in Chrome together - maybe that's a bad thing to do.

Can anyone offer any guidance?

Thanks

Neil_Jones

While you can connect wirelessly and wired together, Windows won't chop and change between the two if one goes down, it will insist on using the active connection - even at the point of going down Windows will just totally ignore the other working connection. To avoid this either wire the PC by cable or do it wirelessly, not both together.

A red light at one of the cable usually means connection failure, this is typically either a faulty port or network cable.

[Deleted User]

Plug it in via an ethernet cable, if everything's fine then it's the WiFi hardware or software. Update all drivers & Windows (preferably to Win 10). It shouldn't be taking 10 minutes to boot so check the device manager and the Windows logs.

[Deleted User]

Neil_Jones wrote: »

While you can connect wirelessly and wired together, Windows won't chop and change between the two if one goes down, it will insist on using the active connection - even at the point of going down Windows will just totally ignore the other working connection. To avoid this either wire the PC by cable or do it wirelessly, not both together.

A red light at one of the cable usually means connection failure, this is typically either a faulty port or network cable.

I don't think they're doing both although it could be me reading the post wrong.

Chomeur

Colin_Maybe wrote: »

I don't think they're doing both although it could be me reading the post wrong.

No I'm not. I could have been clearer but the PC is on the Ethernet cable and I was using my phone to check for wifi to see that the modem/router was not the cause of the fault.

Robisere

What is your ISP?
What router do you have?
Are you on Fibre in any form, or just ADSL?
Can you carry out a Speedtest? - google this: -
speedtest.net
Click "Begin Test" - wait for it to complete - "Share result" - "Copy"
Open a new Window, paste the copied link into your browser search bar.
Click "Paste & go"
An image of your Test result opens.
Try to get a screenshot of the result and post it here.

Heedtheadvice

May well be an ethernet cable/port issue.
However you have not specified if there are any light's 'failed' on your router or if you get dropouts at any time on your WiFi.

I have been thinking along the lines of Robisere. You need to do a bit of diagnostics to pinpoint the area of concern. I would start with the easy area, the router and it's connectivity to the WAN.
Quick and simple, can you access the router stats and see if you can find the event log. Investigate that in case you are losing connection with the exchange/net at all. Maybe not but that would at least rule out one potential area.

You might also see records for device disconnections. As requested by R post the router type and your ISP.

Chomeur

Robisere wrote: »

What is your ISP?
What router do you have?
Are you on Fibre in any form, or just ADSL?
Can you carry out a Speedtest? - google this: -
speedtest.net
Click "Begin Test" - wait for it to complete - "Share result" - "Copy"
Open a new Window, paste the copied link into your browser search bar.
Click "Paste & go"
An image of your Test result opens.
Try to get a screenshot of the result and post it here.

Virgin Media
Virgin Media Super Hub 2ac
I'm on cable, I think
https://imgur.com/a/KVAkZ

I might try to upgrade to Windows 10 at the weekend. But as I recall it was a big hassle upgrading to Windows 8 from Windows XP and I'm not too keen.

So far as I can see it's OK that the lights on the PC end of my ethernet cable are red and orange https://www.quora.com/What-do-the-different-colors-of-lights-in-an-Ethernet-port-mean

thorganby

Chomeur wrote: »

I'm sick of the Internet connection on my PC going down. It happens just about every day. Here are some diagnostics:

Chrome, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox all lose connection.

Google Drive and Filezilla seem to keep connection, strangely.

Turning my Firewall off doesn't help.

I have good wifi connectivity.

My Ethernet cable flashes green at the end of the combined modem/router and yellow and red at the PC whether I have the problem or not.

I'm using Windows 8.

Restarting the computer fixes the problem (but takes a good ten minutes).

I do have a habit of opening up to a dozen tabs in Chrome together - maybe that's a bad thing to do.

Can anyone offer any guidance?

Thanks

Your internet connection is not actually going down if certain connections still work fine e.g. Google drive and Filezilla in your case, email usually continues to work when this failure to browse to websites successfully occurs.

When it happens again, open a Windows command prompt, see here if you don't know how to do this google "how-to-open-command-prompt-2618089" and view the Lifewire page for WIN 8.

Then type the following lines in the command prompt window each followed by Return:

ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
ipconfig /flushdns

You should see a message "Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache message" or similar and can then close the command prompt window and then continue to surf as normal hopefully.

Having 12 tabs open is not a problem, I normally have over 40.

Your machine should definitely not take 10 minutes to re-boot though.

AndyPix

thorganby wrote: »

Your internet connection is not actually going down if certain connections still work fine e.g. Google drive and Filezilla in your case, email usually continues to work when this failure to browse to websites successfully occurs..

Agreed

thorganby wrote: »

Then type the following lines in the command prompt window each followed by Return:
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
ipconfig /flushdns

This needs to be done in an elevated command prompt (run as admin)

Chomeur wrote: »

Restarting the computer fixes the problem (but takes a good ten minutes).

This, combined with your other issue that only seems to be affecting browsers, points to a malware issue.

Run this (free version)
https://www.malwarebytes.com/

And then this.
https://www.malwarebytes.com/adwcleaner/

Let us know what was found

Robisere

Sorry I have only just returned to you chomeur, family alert!
At least you provided the right pic, which has let us know that you have a good service and speeds from your ISP, Virgin. Which points to a possible malware issue.

I cannot offer anything more than the good advice from AndyPix. Follow that and get back to here if it does not work. Good luck!