a little more detail.
I have a cable modem, that goes into my router/hardware firewall which splits off to the (now) XP box, and another box w/ win98SE.
The 98 box has ZERO problems w/ any sort of connection at all (well, it can't see the XP box when it drops its connection)
I have the latest drivers for my netgear nic, and netgear swears its fully compatible w/ XP.
I have tried to remove/reinstall all of the network components for the connection, and all of the repair crap, etc, w/ no change. (an attempted repair after it drops out comes back w/ a "can't renew IP")
Also, some may have misunderstood, this IS a fresh install of XP, I initially did do the upgrade, not expecting it to work very well, and I was right, so I did a complete flush of my system, even reformatting to NTFS and a full fresh install of XP Pro.
Keep the ideas flowing, somehting has got to work!!! This is so frustrating and random!
