Hey everyone,

I am new to this forum, but in reading through the archives I see there is a ton of great info and I already learned a few things. Anyway, I am having a little problem with the internet on one of the computers on my home network, and I am not sure if it's a pc problem, an XP problem, or a networking problem. Hopefully, I am posting in the right spot.

We have 3 pcs in the house, 2 are in the office and the 3rd is in our daughter's room. I have a Linksys router that has been issue free, and the 2 office pcs are connected via ethernet cable while the 3rd pc is connected via wireless card. My computer connects fine and the modem shows all activity normal. However, the other computer in the office is a little older, and it doesn't connect when booting up more than half the time. XP has no problem booting up and I never get any kind of error message, but when the desktop loads, the internet connection icon isn't there. When I try to load IE, it stalls out for about 5 minutes before giving me some error message about not being connected. After between 2 - 5 reboots, it finally loads properly as if nothing was wrong. Strange.

Also, sometimes when rebooting after the connection problem, it just gets stuck at a DOS prompt, and sometimes it does a scandisk after booting, but not always. It seems this helps it boot up properly, but not always. This whole thing is very inconsistent.

I looked through BIOS for something that might have been set wrong, and my network adapter settings say everything is working properly. I am at a loss.

Any help would be seriously appreciated because I am getting ready to build a new pc and my current pc will get passed down the line, which means the problem pc will go to our girl. It's a better pc than the one she has but I just want it to work right... she is a teenager and a pc with internet problems is going to make her crazy, which will make me crazy. I digress. Thank you in advance for any help you can offer!

It's the computer, I switched them.

Seriously, please... someone must know what the problem is with this. I guess I could just reformat, but that was the reason I posted here, to try to avoid that.

If any more details are needed to isolate the problem, just let me know. Thanks again for any help in advance!