Mysterious error

[zpivat]

I've used my computer for about 3 years and this never happened except the last few weeks. Whenever I leave my computer for 6 hours or more, my browsers become dead (i.e: it says

http://www.yahoo.com

could not be found, or

http://www.google.com

could not be found, etc.) My browsers are MSIE 6 and Netscape 7.0. I'm using cable internet. I also recently found out that the 6 hours thing comes no matter what (no matter I'm using the computer or not, after about 6 hours (or around that) the browsers just become dead.)

However, whenever I test with ipconfig, everything seems fine. ICQ and Yahoo Messenger also work perfectly, although if I log-off from them I cannot relogin.
Pinging also works fine.

The only remedy to store everything back to normal is by restarting the computer.

This is the error from Event Viewer:
The browser service has failed to retrieve the backup list too many times on transport \Device\NetBT_Tcpip_{E3075315-6500-461E-AEC0-2CD70311E4DB}. The backup browser is stopping.

Anyone know what's going on? How do I solve this?

 

[ricpinto]

It's seems like you have to be get disconnected when you idle for 6 hurs. Why don't you ask your ISP first? Make sure it's not ISP problem before you meddle your computer.

 

[zpivat]

Hi,

As I specified before, this problem happens no matter I am idle or not. When I go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning that happens. Or, when I use the computer for 6 hours, that also happens without necessarily being idle.

I've used this ISP also for 3 years and it's a cable connection that runs 24/7 and never had any problem before.
I have another computer connected to this one and it never has this problem.

 

[ricpinto]

Opss, you did mention in your first post that it happens whether you're idle or not and I missed that

Can you check RPC service is running when this happens because network connection is also dependent to this service (remember the blaster virus). Update also the NIC drivers or replace it as a testing.

 

[zpivat]

That's alright about the miss, ricpinto!

I am not sure what RPC service is. Anyway, do I check whether or not this running from the Processes tab from the Windows Task Manager?

I tried looking up about the error message and I found this site:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=254527

Do you think that could be the problem? Browse list?
I hope so. Anyway, I have checked the Share File and Printer selection, and I'll see if this problem occurs again. If not, then it must have been the problem, otherwise I really have no clue what's going on.

Thank you!

 

[ricpinto]

Ok you check first.

RPC is Remote Procedure Call (you click start/run and type services.msc and look for the service). Run you antivirus program and apply the patch from

http://www.microsoft.com/security

to eliminate the virus possibility issue.

 

[zpivat]

Hi again ricpinto,

It happened again and I guess the fix that I did did not help. I tried checking if RPC was running when it happened, and yes it was running! *puzzled*

Very weird....

 

[ricpinto]

Ok, now it's becoming interesting.. if we only can detect what are the packets that's running when this event happens then we can start from there. I suspect, maybe only is that somebody doing you "Denial of Service" by ping-ing you very large packets.

http://www.cert.org/tech_tips/denial_of_service.html

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/707/newsflash.html

Actually I have a limited knowledge of troubleshooting in this type of situation because it never happen to me yet, hopefully it will never happen.

I'm hoping this is not your case, but I'm also stumped to what happening to your PC/Server.

Maybe you can try downloading freeware protocol analyzer in

http://www.ethereal.com/

http://openxtra.com/downloads

and share with us what can you find out.