Randomly losing connection to gateway machine

[gdc2001]

I have three XP Pro machines connecting to the internet through a forth XP Pro machine. All machines have the latest patches etc. and all are running Norton Internet Security which is also fully up to date. All machines can see each other for most of the time with no problems at all.
In the past week or so however, the three workstations have been losing connection to the gateway. The three can still comunicate with each other fine, but I can not even ping the gatway from these machine or ping the workstations from the gateway, however, the gatway can still surf the net.
Once the gateway is rebooted, the problem goes away?!?!

One other thig, a friend of mine has just started having the same problem, same isp, different hardware.

Any Ideas, this is driving me MAD!!!

 

[bcastner]

If you:

. right-click the Internet Icon on your system tray, and select repair, does it repair without an error on both Gateway and troubled client?

. Start, Run, CMD, and then ipconfig /release, icponfig /renew does it do this sequence from both Gateway machine and troubled client workstation without error?


I am highly suspicious of your Firewall possibly blocking braodcast traffic during a DHCP renewal. Have you tried this without any firewall involved?

It could be that the driver is failing under load on the Gateway. I have had better luck using the chipset drivers instead of the manufacturer's drivers. An IPCONFIG /all will show you the chipset manufacturer for the Gateway machine. Then google the web site to find a newer driver set for the NIC.