Hopefully someone can make some sense of this:

WinXP sp1
AMD xp1800
Cable Internet connection
NOT using software firewall of any kind


I'm connected through a router which has a built in firewall. I have permitted the ports, and even turned the firewall off, and then bypassed the whole router alltogether, pluging the ethernet cord from the cable modem straight into my network card in my computer. In any of those cases, this is what happens:

I'm able to connect just fine. It usually connects to about 6 servers, all of them say 'outgoing' under the status column of the connections tab. During the time limewire is working correctly, everything is fine. I can search, download, upload, and use the internet connection for other things with other programs.

Then, without warning, all downloading and uploading stops and goes to 0kB/s, but there is still a value in the Time column, like it is trying to download. The status column also still reports that it is downloading from x number of hosts. About 5-10 minutes later, the window pops up saying that limewire cannot connect, and I may have a firewall blocking it from accessing the internet. Here's the real confusing part:

Once this happens, I simply cannot connect to anything or use my internet connection for any purpose. Web browsers return that the server cannot be found, email cannot be checked, etc. Not only that, but when I am plugged into the router, typing the 192.168.2.1 router IP address into a web browser doesn't even work (doesn't take me to the router's admin login page). It's as if windows simply is not allowing any traffic to enter or exit the network card.

Sometimes exiting limewire, ensuring that the limewire processes have stoped, loging off, and loging back on, return the internet connection to normal, but only about 20% of the time.



What could possibly be going on here? Since I cannot access the router's admin page, and the fact that the entire connection stops, I have to assume that it is a problem within my computer as opposed to a firewall or ISP issue.