Computer connected, browsers aren't

This may classify as noob or windows but anyway...

We had a hard drive crash. Had to buy a new HD and reinstall XP SP2. Since then both Firefox and IE will drop connections. Usually get a can't find server screen. Windows says the wired network is still connected with no interruptions and all the lights on the router say everything is ok. We switched ISPs (for unrelated reasons) and still have the same problem. I have searched M$ and ASUS (motherboard, don't have the model number here at work) for networking drivers, updated everything I can and googled the problem with several different wordings and haven't gotten anywhere. Once I was in the midst of a download, everything quit, I left for a few minutes to deal with children, came back and the connection was up and running again. My wife has a separate login account on the computer and experiences the same thing.

Any suggestions would be appreciated, and if it's something really stupid, I will accept my lashings.

 

could be that you need to specify the DNS settings in your network (I had a similar problem last week where my DNS settings had been wiped).

you'll need to get the DNS settings from your ISP website (you can also try googling DNS and your ISP name).
you should have 2 sets of numbers in the following format (I'll use Pipex as an example)


Go to Network connections in the control panel.
dbl click the connection you use (should be Local Area Connection)
click properties
highlight Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and click the properties button
select Use the following DNS Server addresses
enter the preferred DNS server and alternate DNS server addresses.
Click OK on all open windows.

 

Or you could just set them to OpenDNS.

 

Thanks. I'll try the OpenDNS first and see what happens.

 

Well, I haven't got a good chance to try it out yet, but I got annoyed at all the popups from Panda's free AV, so I uninstalled it and got AVG running, and the little bit I've managed to be on it since then, no more dropped connection. We'll just see if it stays that way or not.