On Sat, 23 Jun 2012 05:49:45 +0000, alpsoandso
wrote:


Excellent points, thanks.

Yes, I have cloned the drive. I use clonzilla. restoring the original
HD from clone is a time saver, but it puts back an OS that will
inevitably fail (if history repeats itself a 4th or 5th time). I need to
know WHY it is messing up and how to fix it.

Absolutely.

The connection is through ethernet cable to a tp-link router.
I doubt I can ping (don't know how) anything because XP insists that a
network cable is disconnected. I have highspeed DSL from my cable
supplier. The router serves 3 other computers that may or may not be on
at the same time. None of the computers is set up to "talk" to any of
the others.

Ping is easy, and simply checks for connectivity between two points.
At the command prompt, type "ping 192.168.1.1" to ping your tp-link
router, assuming you've left it at the default. I agree, ping won't
work if XP says the network is disconnected.

Note that DSL typically comes from the phone company while cable comes
from the cable company. As competitors, DSL doesn't come from the
cable company, but it's irrelevant now that I know you have a router.
You're losing connectivity between the PC and the router, not between
the router and the Internet.

ipconfig /all might give something.

I went into the fresh install I made on the small hard drive. It does
not have all the software I use on the affected system. So it is
cleaner.
I took some screen shots (camera) of the network settings and settings
for the broadcom 4401 controller.

A camera works, but you'll usually use the Print Screen key on your
keyboard, either by itself to capture the entire screen or Alt-PrtSc
to capture just the active window. Anything you do from a command
prompt can be saved in a text file by using the redirection modifier,
as in "ipconfig /all C:\ipconfig.txt".

I will compare those to the settings on the affected system to see if
they match up. They should.

Maybe also ipconfig /all on the fresh install and the affected install,
could be interesting.

Thanks again!

You're welcome. Let us know how it goes.