I have a “Packard bell club89” 600mhz celoron processer 128mb ram. Windows 98se. I,ve a netopia 3300 series broadband router connected by usb1. the problem is everytime I turn on my computer, an hour later my connection is lost. I get the “cannot find server” page. The connection is always on. I called my isp and its not a problem with them (they thought it might be windows) I tried closing down the programmes in the background but it made no differance. and the lights on the router are still correct I have to restart the computer and it will work for another hour. I never had this problem until i upgraded to broadband from dialup. please if anyone can help, it driving me mad! Regards Dathai

Could this be a case of hibernation? I use S1 minimal settings in the BIOS and never on all but the monitor when using Win98.

Check the DHCP lease time on your router. If it is dropping every hours it would appear that your DHCP lease for the LAN is expiring. There should be a setting to increase the lease time, or even set it so that it never expires. Re-booting obtains a new LAN IP address with a new lease time. Next time it happens, go to a command prompt and type ipconfig /renew. If this solves the problem then you have the answer. Stuart

You need to go into your router's setting page to adjust the lease time for your private IPs. Otherwise you should be able to go to Start, Run, winipcfg, select your Adapter and then hit the Release and then the Renew buttons to get a new lease. HTH Bryan

Thanks for your suggustions Stewart I tried ipconfig /renew but it didn't bring back the connection. othehill It might be a bios setting. the trouble is i'm not too familier with it I looked in and saw s1 on power management but im not sure. so if i can figure out the CMOS/Bios i'll have a go. I appreciate the help.

The other responses here seem to be viable. Try them first, if you still need to change settings in the BIOS I will try to help you then.

problem Solved! It was the lease time thing, I'd never herd of it before with my limited tech knowledge i went to my router ip and changed the hours there as suggested. othehill,stewart,bryan - thanks a million.