>Since the last two days, after I reinstalled the OS, I have found that the Internet connection goes down when I start my work in the morning. This only happens on my PC where the reinstall took place. The Internet connection works fine on the laptops. Anyone would have any idea where I should look for in regards to this situation which seems to be related to a timeout of inactivity?

You seem to have at least a couple of serious problems with that rebuilt machine, and you've spent a bunch of time trying to fix them.

If I were you I'd consider rebuilding the machine again from scratch, it could well give you a faster solution than trying to fix these problems.

As per my usual practice I recommend a bare-metal reinstallation, not a repair installation. If there are settings you want preserved you can try the File and Settings Transfer Wizard and copy them to another drive on your network, from which they can be restored later.

If you do a complete bare-metal reinstallation, make sure any antivirus or antispyware is the very last thing you do, after Windows/Microsoft Update.

Another tip for improved reliability when doing a bare-metal reinstallation:

- use XP Setup to blow away any existing partition
- then create a new partition and tell XP to use NTFS on it
- don't use the Quick Format option, use the regular full format, which is better at checking and mapping bad disk sectors if found. This takes a while with a large drive but is worth it if you can do something else productive in the meantime