Random Disconnects (patience wearing out)

tyraelx1 · 27-07-2005, 20:22

I am currently living in Northern Ireland, beside Belfast.

Now, this problem started around 9 months ago. I may got a disconnect once every 1 or 2 days. Then, in the past 2 months, the problem has got much much worse. On a good day I will disconnect maybe 10 times. On a bad day I could disconnect 10 times in 1 hour.

I am very aware of this as I am an online gamer.

After 10 phone calls to NTL and being told the same thing over and over again, I finally get an engineer to come out. He comes and says "yeah, I tightened up a few things. Should be ok now."

Of course nothing was fixed. Off he went.

After maybe 50 million more calls, I then get yet another engineer to come out. This guy was a bit more professional and asked me lots of questions in detail.. he ran some sort of tests.. and in the end he just gave me a new modem with new wires etc.

Before I had one of the silver modems and now I have the small translucent blue one.

It was actually ok for about 45 mins, then it went back to as worse as ever.

I then bought an Ethernet cable. No difference. Same thing with USB and ethernet.

I have no firewalls up. No anti-virus software running. I'm on XP Home.

Usually to get the connection working again when it goes down, I have to power on and off the modem. Sometimes it comes back on itself.

I have the 3mbit connection. They say its working fine, and it is working to its full potential when it does work.

I have no routers or anything like that. I have one pc.

One of the times when I rang up, the guy suggested I should go and get my pc checked at a shop for 'winsock files'. Anyway to download these or something?

I'm absolutely sick and tired of this. If any of you uber-leet dudes here could give me some advice, I'd greatly appreciate it.

I'm one step away from cutting my contract with NTL.

/Tyrael

Stuart · 27-07-2005, 22:12

to CableForum.

Are any lights showing on the Modem when the connection dies?

tyraelx1 · 27-07-2005, 22:21

Hello Stuart,

Most of the time when the connection drops, the Sync and Ready lights are solid. The usb or enet light is also solid depending on which im using of course.

Ignition · 28-07-2005, 01:35

Umm...

Quote:

I have no firewalls up. No anti-virus software running. I'm on XP Home.

Erk comes to mind.

Quote:

One of the times when I rang up, the guy suggested I should go and get my pc checked at a shop for 'winsock files'. Anyway to download these or something?

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/winsockxpfix.html

An online virus scan might be in order as well:

http://uk.trendmicro-europe.com/cons...all_launch.php

Raistlin · 28-07-2005, 01:52

Forgive me if I'm barking up the wrong tree.....I can see (I think) where Ignition is coming from on this one (maybe

).

It could be something on your local machine that is affecting your connection.

If you have no firewall, no router, no protection, it is possible that your machine has been compromised in some way and your connection is being adversly affected as a result.

I would suggest that you really need to be running some anti-virus software through it, along with some spyware scanning software, to make sure that there's nothing in there that shouldn't be. As a next step you need some sort of firewall.

Once you're positive that your machine hasn't been compromised we will be able to say with more certainty that it is a problem with the connection.

To my recollection there has been more than one thread here recently with similar symptoms to yours, so it could be a dodgy connection - it pays to rule out the other possibilities first though.
__________________

Apologies, where are my manners?

to Cable Forum

__________________

The other thing that might be causing a problem is that (and I could be wrong on this, one of the Techs will have to confirm) if you are uploading a constant stream of data which swamps your upstream connection you will sometimes get the symptoms that you describe.

You say that you are a gamer, do you get the same symptoms if you aren't playing any games? Are you running any P2P software which might be uploading?

50420 · 28-07-2005, 01:55

not much to go by... but on first glance and from whats been stated, i'd go with the tech guy being on the right lines...very possibly a winsock issue.

btw tyrael...welcome to the forum....
might be worth you checking your IP address when you lose your connection
and post the results back here.. just the first two or three sets of digits

if you have a valid NTL IP address we can go from there... or if its an address starting with 192 or 169... we can look down other avenues.

KevAmiga · 28-07-2005, 07:03

When you loose your connection, can you release / renew the IP and get back online or do you need to reboot the modem?

28-07-2005, 07:34

I've had minor problems with connection loss too. Went down late yesterday afternoon and the day before too. Those late afternoon timings make me wonder as when the network was more fragile than it is now I used to be able to set my clock by the degradation in service come 5 pm.

tyraelx1 · 28-07-2005, 10:09

Well, the thing is, I format my PC rather frequently. Maybe once every 2 months. I'm not sure, but I think this rules out my machine being compromised in any way as the disconnects still happen immediately after the format. (a total format by the way)

I don't run a firewall or anti-virus software because I've had bad experiences with it in the past. It's basically a pain in the ass and doesn't mix well with online gaming.

Anyway, I've installed those winsock files you gave me ignition, so lets see what happens now.

Just done that online virus scan too... it came up clean.

Well I'll let you guys know if I get disconnected in the next few hours. I'm gripping the edge of my seat at the minute.. hoping.. just hoping.

I don't want to have to sign over to BT -.-

@50420

The NTL tech support checked that and they said it was OK.

/tyrael

KevAmiga · 28-07-2005, 10:17

If you loose the connection, try simply release / renewing the IP address,,, tell me if that works.

tyraelx1 · 28-07-2005, 12:10

Hey KevAmiga,

I just disconnected there now.. was actually going good there for a while for some reason.

I released - that worked. Then I tried renewing but the connection didn't come back on.

Had to refresh the modem.

50420 · 28-07-2005, 12:16

what was the error message recieved when it failed to renew the IP address ?
if it was something like "An error occurred while renewing interface 'Internet': An operation was attempted on something that is not a socket" then it could still be a winsock issue.

there's more info here http://onecomputerguy.com/windowsxp_tips.htm#winsock2

when you lose the connection.... are you able to ping any urls or IP address's... or even a loopback address

tyraelx1 · 28-07-2005, 13:00

Ahh I didn't note that down.

Have to wait till it goes down again. For some reason it's not disconnecting as often now.

50420 · 28-07-2005, 13:06

perhaps the winsock link posted by Ignition has made the difference ?
have used that myself on a few occaisions...
generally use this fix though... http://www.cexx.org/lspfix.htm only cos i've got the address stuck in me ead.

tyraelx1 · 28-07-2005, 14:48

Hasn't disconnected for about 3 hours now. Going good!

Making alot of effort not to move my desk in any way incase i muck it up

Yeah I think the winsock fix has helped, altho I did get disconnected once after it. Well, we'll see what happens over the next 24 hours or so.

Thanks alot for the help so far guys.