charlie brown: thanks for the compliment. hope i can help.
i will dissect your paragraph, as that would be the easiest way to not lose you in techno babble.
“Every once in a while I lose internet connectivity completely.”
this can be caused by many factors:
1. most common, connectivity problems, these range from your isp to youre router. now i doubt it is optimum online. though it is possible. if you do not have tv or phone service from cablevision, then it is possible after a rain storm for water to get into these stupid clip things cablvision uses on the outside wires from stopping you from getting any tv reception. in a way they are filters. very unlikely, but i have seen this problem before, including in my old apartment.
i would first check these though, as dealing with cablevision is a pain. are you connecting your computer straight to the cable modem (hope not, as this is incrediably unsafe.) hopefully you have a router. unplug the router, and plug it back in. if the connection comes back, youre router is shot. replace
if that doesnt work, i would replace the cable modem. its free. if you live in flatbush, the place to go is on ave k and 49th, off kings hiway. call cablevision, theyll give you the exact adress. if youre modem is a rectangle, then those have been known to be faulty. you want the rounder ones that stand up, not the one that lays flat.
if that doesnt work, have a technician come down and look.
when you restart youre computer you might be pulling a new address from your router, which will make your connection work again.
” IE will say the page is unavailable no matter what website I try and my email (Eudora) also can’t connect. I don’t know if the problem is with windows (vista), my ISP (optonline) or perhaps my free antivirus software (avast home edition), or maybe something else that I didn’t think of.”
besidse the directions above for connectivity issues, there can be a local problem, a viruz/spyware/adware. download spybot search and destroy (google it) and run it. you will need to update it after the install. it is free, and once you have it installed start a search, if it finds anything, have it remove them.
then if you still have the problems, do the steps above.
“The windows don’t freeze so I assume its not a RAM issue but I don’t know how to figure out what it is.”
more or less irrelavent to connectivity issues. the only time hardware internally will effect your connectivity will be if you mother board is going, so look at my previous answer to see how to tell.
“The windows don’t freeze so I assume its not a RAM issue but I don’t know how to figure out what it is.”
aas i said before, this can be because your computer is pulling a new address when it reboots. you can check if this is the case the next time you discconnect. open a command prompt, google command prompt vista if you cant figure out how, and type in onfig. if you get 127.0.0.1 you are not getting a true adress.
hope this helped.