To preface, let me apologize if this is not the correct forum in which to ask this question. I didn't see a general (or anything specifically pre-Vista) Windows networking forum. As long as I can remember in my usage with Windows (15+ years), some networking component has been prone to occasional crashes. I don't know if it's specifically a Windows component, such as Winsock, or if it's always been the fault of a third-party application breaking the connection. At this point, it's more of a curiosity, as it's not something that happens every day or even every week, but perhaps once a month, my web browser (I personally use Mozilla Firefox) will suddenly become unable to reach any destination and will be stuck in the perpetual "Connecting to..." state, as visible in the status bar. (IE I've noticed says "Waiting for reply from..." in perpetuity) I can remember having this same issue from time to time on a Win95 machine running Netscape years ago. When this happens, it's not just that the browser stops working. It completely breaks the connection altogether, as Groupwise/etc will cease to be able to connect as well. IE also won't work after this network freeze-up, so there's no hope in switching browsers to avoid a lengthy reboot. Opening up "Network Connections" and trying to "repair" the connection never succeeds, nor does ipconfig /renew. The only solution I have ever found to work is simply to completely reboot the system. It can be a bit of an annoyance, especially when nearing the end of a lengthy download, but luckily that's not too often experienced. Most recently the only activity I've been interrupted during has been watching a video on Netflix. The only system I can confirm this still happens on is Windows XP, as I have recently installed Win 7 on my desktop at home, but do not use it all that often as I dual-boot Ubuntu and use that for nearly everything except gaming and developing the occasional Win32 app for school. I've searched online for others with the same random issue though I've always come up empty-handed. I've tried to speculate on third-party causes such as nVidia drivers (Occasionally on nVidia gfx based systems I've owned in the past, a network freeze and subsequent reboot was accompanied by a segfault in 'nvtray'-something-or-other)...Sonic/Roxio DLA (occasionally when this networking freeze occurs and I go to reboot, DLACTRLW.EXE has hung as well, so as a result I disabled it recently in startup. Has not seemed to make a difference so far). Maybe it's Mozilla that initially causes the hang-up (since Netscape used to hang as well)? I can't confirm that IE never breaks it since I don't use IE if I can help it. Perhaps I should switch to IE for a few months and see what happens. I'm stumped. As I said, at this point it's a curiosity as I'm not sure it even still occurs on newer Windows OSes, and on every system I own (3) I dual-boot (or run XP in VirtualBox on one machine) and use Ubuntu for nearly everything. The only system which I am destined to experience this occasional nuisance on is at work. It would be nice if I could learn what causes it and put a stop to it. If anyone has any info I'd be glad to hear it. Cheers.

I'd like to help, but can we stick to Windows 7 as this is the forum for Windows 7 issues. So please if you don't mind, recount/rehash exactly what the problem is in Windows 7. I get dizzy trying to decipher all the above references to this and that which has no bearing to Windows 7 ;)I apologize in advance for being too direct.If the problem is Windows XP go here http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/itproxpsp/threads/If the problem is Vista go here http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/category/windowsvistaitpro/If the problem is Ubuntu go here http://ubuntuforums.org/MCSE, MCSA, MCDST [If this post helps to resolve your issue, please click the "Mark as Answer" or "Helpful" button at the top of this message. By marking a post as Answered, or Helpful you help others find the answer faster.]