Question : Presario 2100 Network Disconnects with Linksys Router

A friend of mine has a Compaq Presario 2135US laptop, running WinXP Home.  When he connects directly to his cable modem, everthing is fine.  When he uses the same cable to connect via a Linksys Router (BEFSR41), after about 10 minutes, all of his network connections (IE, IM, etc) disconnect, and he can't reconnect until he reboots the laptop (sometimes the router needs to be booted, too).

Now, this obviously looked like a router issue, but another friend of his took his Toshiba laptop over, used the same port and cable as he was using, and had no disconnect problems.

Things we've tried:

- Updated all available drivers from Compaq (HP).
- Updated the routers firmware to the current version.
- Ran chkdsk /r and sfc /scannow.
- Looked for errors in the event files - none were found.
- Disabled Norton Internet Security - problem remains.
- Disabled everything in startup - problem remains.

I've suggested running hardware diagnostics (just to eliminate one more thing), but he can't find them, and I can't seem to find a place to download them from.

This is nuts - any ideas?

Answer : Presario 2100 Network Disconnects with Linksys Router

tedsky, that is a good workaround.  I will preserve this question.

Quesition will be PAQ'd and points refunded.

Yensidmod
EE Moderator