Browser oddities.

Sterica

This has become a pain really, so I'm looking for advice.

At seemingly random times, Firefox just stops working, saying it can connect to the website. This happens to EVERY website, and I get the same results on Internet Explorer.

I still have internet. It happened once while I was playing WoW. I was connected to the game just fine, and there wasn't any lag issues to signal me that it happened. I just alt-tabbed and couldn't visit any websites. Hell, it happened today and my downloads finished just fine.

This has been happening since May, though it seems to be increasing with frequency. The only solution right now is to restart my computer, which is annoying.

As for details, I'm using Vista and connected via wire to a D-Link router (though this problem has happened on a different model D-Link and while connected wirelessly on my friend's network). Any sort of help here would be appreciated.

AtomBomb

At first glance I would say firewall, if WoW is working but browsers are not. I know jack shit about Vista though, so I can't help you with specifics.

edit~ In fact, if you can find the settings for it, I would just turn the windows firewall off and see if that helps. I vaguely remember reading something about how doing that in Vista is kind of a pain, in that it seems to be off but it's not.

drunkgnoll

This is kind of obvious, but does your network interface card even support vista? Maybe vista lets you use xp drivers, but this backwards-compatibility might also make the drivers unstable too. On wikipedia it says they rewrote the wireless part (whatever that means) so maybe this might effect you somehow. Honestly, I am really just bsing you because although I know how to setup a network under linux, for windows the only cure I know for network problems is to restart. Also, you should try typing "ping www.google.com" in the command line (type cmd in run to start it) and see if it responds. Sometimes when the connection is too slow the browser will simply timeout, but you might still be connected nevertheless.