Recently my wife's machine just started randomly losing it's network connection. Nothing has changed on her machine at all. Here's the details I can think of:

- I'm running 3 computers behind a Linksys router. Only her computer has this issue. They all have static IPs. When the computer loses its connection, I can no longer ping the router, and of course none of the other machines on the network can see this machine then either.
- In addition to the onboard NIC, tried a PCI card
- Have removed the NIC from the device manager and reinstalled
- The following things restore the connection SOMETIMES, but none of them work consistently: disabling/re-enabling the connection in the "network connecitons", rebooting
- Using the "repair" option on the connection always says that it worked, but never restores the connection.
- It seems to possibly get worse over time. This part I'm not sure about, but it seems like after each time I've removed and re-added the connection, it seemed to work for a day or two. After that, when I start just trying the disable/re-enable, or reboot it seems to start losing connection after shorter and shorter times. Several times it has eventually got to the point where I couldn't keep a connection for more than a couple of minutes. I don't know if this actually gets worse with time, or if it's just random in how long it will hold its connection.
- have checked for viruses, adware/spyware, etc. used registry mechanic to look for any problems there.

Is there anything else I can try aside from a total XP re-install? Any other tools that might help find the problem? Some netstat commands or something? (I'm not very familiar with all the netstat commands). I really don't want to do a complete re-install but I'm running out of ideas here.

Uhh, have you tried a different ethernet cable?

"...but in my defense, it was dark, I was drunk, and it was delicious!"

Yeah, tried a different cable, and switching ports on the router too.

Within Device manager locate your network card,Right click and select properties.
Under the power management tab uncheck "allow
the computer to turn of this device to save power" then click ok.

If that fails try updating your driver.
Then if that fails swap the network cards around to see if the problem persists on the other computer if it does then it is your network card

Tried all that and a fresh install of XP, but no luck. At this point I'm thinking it has to be motherboard or a virus on the second hard drive which I'll check out when I get home. I'm going to do another clean install without the second drive connected.