I have been searching these boards for a solution for some time but have found nothing, but then I don't know what words to use to narrow down my search.

Intermittently, and with increasing frequency, my internet connection seems to crap out although everything indicates I am still connected. It only occurs in IE and less frequently with OE. If I click a link, the back button or the forward button, nothing happens. The only way to get it started again is to hit stop and refresh. It used to never happen upon launch but now it's even doing it then - I click IE and I get a white page. The intervals go from several seconds to even a minute or two, and sometimes I have to do the stop/refresh thing two or three times.

It has never happened with any other type of program such as AIM or Ws_ftp. I know it's not the ISP because it has changed since this started. I know it's not the connection line because it does it with both DSL and dial-up, and besides, like I said before, it only does it with IE and OE. My DSL manager shows "connected to server" the entire time.

I have repaired and even re-installed IE, and then redownloaded and reinstalled it, and no difference. I even reinstalled Windows, and no difference. I have and use an anti-virus program and it has never picked up a virus. I even deleted and reinstalled all the adapters even though it does not seem to be a connection problem, but an IE/OE problem. It didn't make a difference either.

I feel like maybe the registry is corrupted, because my connection crapped out totally once after a lightning strike and I ended up having to delete keys having to do with winsock, but now I can't find the website that dealt with that so I am unable to try it to see if that works.

This has been going on for months now, and it happens about every second or third click now. I was two days late getting a website up for friends because I had to keep waiting for my connection to wake back up.

I have Win98SE and IE6.