Wireless connectivity problem - Give me some hints

[wdcbooks]

My wife's laptop has a problem that I can't solve. That isn't unusual as the things I can solve are rather limited. It would greatly improve marital harmony if I could get her laptop running correctly.

We have an unsecured wireless connection that we both use. We both have Dells that are about a year old. My computer stays connected while hers will no longer load pages. The connection status shows that she is fully connected but no pages will load. We do not run a firewall that I know of. This happens with both Explorer and Firefox.

I consistently get fifteen minutes of working time on her machine before it stops loading pages. Then I restart and I get a fresh fifteen minutes. I feel like I'm in some internet cafe or something. Can anyone give me an idea of what might be going on, and how to fix it? Any help would be immensely appreciated.

[SamIAm]

[ QUOTE ]
The connection status shows that she is fully connected but no pages will load.

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Please check the CTH FAQ and let us know where her net chain breaks during those outages. There's a big gap between "connection status shows fully connected" and browsing. (I especially wonder whether she's getting an IP, and if she can ping the router.)
-Sam

[wdcbooks]

Thank you Sam. I went through the FAQ and ran through the suggested CMD prompts. Everything worked fine, ipconfig brought up my IP adresses. I then pinged my router and it took a few ms (3-6) but got a response. I pinged the 4.2 etc IP adress and got a response. I pinged google.com and got a response.

I am happy to provide more detail if you can tell me what to look for. The breakdown appears to be in that last step of actually browsing the site. Neither Explorer nor Firefox works.

[SamIAm]

Very strange. To make sure I have it right, during an outage she can ping www.google.com, but she can't web there?

[wdcbooks]

That is correct Sam. My daughter is also playing MSN internet games while being unable to load any pages in Explorer or Firefox.

[LeapFrog]

Sounds like a DNS issue

[wdcbooks]

So what can I do to troubleshoot it and what does it mean?

[LeapFrog]

Here is a detailed explaintion of DNS:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_system

Basically DNS servers map domain names such as www.google.com to an IP address.

Your problem does sound like it could be DNS releated, though I am curious about one thing... You could successfully ping www.google.com as opposed to its IP address?

Generally a good test would be to ping say 4.2.2.2 then www.google.com. If you can successfully ping the IP but not the domain name then your having a problem with DNS translation.

Your running XP I imagine? You say your not running a software firewall? I had an issue with ZoneAlarm where after 10 minutes or so I would experience DNS resolution issues. I could connect with the PokerStars client, but not with a web browser. This was due to having some security levels set on high.

That said, I would suggest you try installing ZoneAlarm. Reason being is that this could be some wierd issue with the windows firewall in XP. If you install ZoneAlarm the XP firewall will be deactived. ZoneAlarm is considered superior to the windows firewall.

Now this is just a hunch here, but if nothing else having a software firewall installed is a good idea. They provide a level of protection in regard to outbound program control.
For example, if you were to pickup say a keystroke logger, a software firewall makes it more difficult for the malware to send information from your computer.

[SamIAm]

[ QUOTE ]
Your problem does sound like it could be DNS releated, though I am curious about one thing... You could successfully ping www.google.com as opposed to its IP address?

Generally a good test would be to ping say 4.2.2.2 then www.google.com.

[/ QUOTE ]
Right, he did ping 4.2.2.1, then pinged google. Both worked. I suppose it could be some superweird DNS caching thing, so you could try pinging a site you know you haven't surfed to, but I assume it'll work the same as google.

I agree with LeapFrog that the problems on the computer's side, but I really can't think what it could be. When did this problem start? Is any connectivity effected besides browsing?

[wdcbooks]

The problem started in earnest last night, but before that she was prone to lose connection at times when I wasn't. I pinged yahoo and it worked fine and I never visit there. Connectivity is fine aside from browsing. I am now sitting with a pretty much useless machine until I can get this fixed. That means she is using my computer at prime poker playing times.

Aaarghhh.