Save My Internet

[Autocratic]

So a few months ago my Internet stopped working. The modem (Comcast cable) is fine - it works on my roommate's PC. Network connections said the connection was fine, and the Comcast people told me the network card was to blame. I encountered a peculiar problem. When trying to reinstall the onboard (MSI K8 Neo2 something or other mobo) ethernet drivers, the installation would always freeze up. Other drivers worked fine. I got a new network card, which had the same problem. So I finally got a hold of my XP disk and did a reformat Monday. Voila - Internet working - for two days. Today at noon (noon exactly I think, which is strange because that's when Windows was set to auto-update daily) it stopped. It seemed to be the same problem. I did another reformat, since I had everything backed up and I only had installed the essential drivers and loaded up some documents anyway. I encountered a couple of problems, though I'm not clear on exactly what went wrong, and now am having the same problem again (having never connected to the Internet after todays second reformat).

In addition, when trying to install the second network card, the PC always freezes, locking up almost entirely, and when I restart XP gets stuck at the load screen. I have to boot in safe mode (safe mode "with networking" does not load) and then do a system restore for the PC to even start at that point. This is all very strange for a computer that has otherwise had very few significant problems. At this point it seems to be a hardware issue - do I need a new mobo? This is kind of a problem as I don't trust myself to rebuild my PC and will want to get it to a good technician, the only one of which I trust is at home in Philly. I figure I could get it there within a couple weeks if the need be, however. I'm pondering a wireless card to tide me over, but I'm not sure I want to drop $60 on something that could just as easily not work.

Some other specs: Athlon 64 3400+, 2 GB RAM, Radeon 9800 256MB.

Any help would be appreciated.