Internet Connection Problem

[pctech45]

Hi there people. I'm new to these boards but it seems to be one of only a handful of places to go to find help and I got a problem that has me stymied.

My son has a Soyo SY-P4I865PE Plus DRAGON 2 v1.0 motherboard in his system. I've used a 1.6. 1.8, and a 3.0 GHz processor in it and it now has new memory totallying 2.0 GB is size. It has a new 160 GB WD hard drive and a new Nvidia dual port video card.

The motherboard seems to have a problem though. For some reason when he's browsing the Internet he will lose his internet connection and will get a IE equivalent of the screen of death. Basically it tells him his page can't be displayed. What further lends to the unusual nature of this problem is that he doesn't have the problem with Firefox, and when he's playing his FFII game it will NOT loose it's connectivity to the Internet when his IE IS loosing it's connectivity.

I've tried uninstall IE 6.0 and reinstalling, I've tried completely reinstalling his XP thinking he got some bug from one of his many chat programs, I've even installed IE 7.0 (please, put the arrows down!).

I'm at a loss. Can anyone out there help me with this problem? Thanks in advance.

[rjfvillarosa]

What drivers are you using for the onboard LAN?

[pctech45]

I am using the drivers that loaded automatically with Windows XP.

[rjfvillarosa]

After installing Windows and before you did anything else you should have put the motherboard CD in the machine and updated all the motherboard drivers.
Put the motherboard CD in your machine, when the CD auto starts just click close. Go to Device Manager and update the Network adapter drivers, Windows will search the CD but you can specify a location if you want and just navigate to the LAN driver file on the CD.

[pctech45]

If you don't mind me asking, is a specific fix for this motherboard? I did see the drivers on the CD and there are newer ones on the Soyo website but I didn't think the drivers on the CD would make that much of a difference.

[rjfvillarosa]

Windows drivers are generic and will not work any where near as good as the drivers written specifically for the hardware in question, they quite likely will not give full functionality which seems to be what you are experiencing.

[pctech45]

I gotcha. I downloaded the most current drivers and installed them. I guess we'll see how things go. I'll let you know if they don't work, and thanks!