I am having some semi serious computer issues, usually I can fix most of these, but this one is boggling me, and driving me totally nuts.

I have an AMD Athlon 550 running Win 98, 160 megs of RAM, and 80 gigs of HD space on two hard drives. Its a bit old, but it does the job, usually.

I use DSL to connect to the internet.

As of late, I have been having issues where I would get disconnected from the net for just long enough to drop me from any chats I might be in, make web pages hang for awhile, and disconnect some of my messenging programs.

It reconnects on its own within seconds, but I think anyone here can understand the annoyance of trying to go through paid e-mail via the webmail thingy (prefer it to outlook personally) and have the inbox not want to load up, or being in the middle of a chat and being disconnected and then having to reconnect and your previous nick didn't disconnect yet, so you gotta kill it (I am a major IRC junkie and used to hang out on there while doing my PTR stuffs).

As many can well imagine, this is seriously slowing me down in going through paid e-mails, I am days behind, and honestly, one can only take so much e-mail without going nuts, that is why I tended to have IRC open too.

I know it is not a general network issue, did some tests with my roommate's computer, she could remain connected just fine. I tried actually installing the DSL software, as the last time I had issues, that worked, but it doesn't want to install, again, and the trick I used the last time didn't work, the software times out when trying to find the connection, even though its connection manager says the connection is functioning normally.

Formatting has been suggested as a possible fix, but I honestly would rather try anything but that, and calling my DSL company is the step right before formatting, I hate calling tech support people, they treat me like a moron and tend to not listen to a word I say and suggest I try things I specifically told them I tried, so I tend to end up yelling at them, which is why I tend to avoid it, unless I cannot fix the problem.

If there are any serious computer gurus here, I would love a few more suggestions of things to try before I have to deal with being treated like a stupid person who doesn't know how to plug in a computer correctly.

Umm maybe try a new network card?

I had a similar problem, might be totally different but its worth asking...have you plugged anything new into your usb connections lately? I got a new webcam, plugged it in and kept getting cut off, took me ages to work it out, but i just swopped them over (cam and modem) and everything works fine again.

How is the DSL connected to your computer? vis with ethernet or USB? If its ethernet it could be a bad card (thats easy to fix being that the cards only cost about $7. If its on USB then do you have it connected directly to the computer or through a hub (4 port splitter). If through a hub it could be a bad hub (I had one just a few weeks ago. Mad my mouse go crazy) If it goes directly through the computer it might be a conflict. Etherway switching the cables around might do some good. Ohh! The computer only has a certain amount of bandwidth set up for USB and if you try to use something else when the bandwidth is used up then it won't work. (I've had this happen but I only have USB 1.1 I don't no if the bandwidth is higher on USB 2.0 but I think it is)

I think I got in all I wanted to say.

I know what you mean, my internet sometimes shuts down too. It doesn't happen that often anymore, but there were times that is was very bad (5+ times a day). After a little while the problems went away and now it happens like once in a month. So maybe you'll just have to wait.

You also might try to get a new network card like Starlite said, a friend of mine had 20kb/s for over a month, which was because his network card was damaged.