Loosing connection

What are the power saving options for that device? Find out in Device Manager by right clicking and checking under the Power Management tab. You won't wreck the planet single-handed if you turn all options off and let it drink electricity all the time.  

I have exactly the same problem. My win 7 desktop loses connection while my Vista laptop does not. However, I started having the problem before a couple of days when the MS Security Essentials detected a threat (Hacktool:win32/keygen). I ran almost all the removal tools you can think of (I tried, MS SE, Prevx, Malwarebytes, HitmanPro, TDSSKiller, and the kaspersky virus removal tool, and finally installed AVG instead of MS SE) and made sure that I do not have any threats anymore. Unfortunately, I started losing Internet connection too frequently, and my NIC was not configured to save power. Any ideas?

I turned off the power saving options for netwok devices and I will let you know how it goes.

Hello and welcome to Tom's Hardware Forums.

You might get better suggestions in the Security section of the Windows 7 sub-Forum but for my money, you should run ComboFix to make sure the residual parts of that threat are fully removed. If you didn't run the other scans as Administrator and particularly MBAM in Safe Mode elevated to Administrator, they may not have been able to complete their work.

I also believe that MSE is better than AVG at the moment and cannot understand why you ditched it. It identified and flagged up the threat, didn't it?

Thank you for the warm welcome and for taking the time to reply. I ran all of those tools in safe mode as admin, and each one of them found different issues so I think they worked properly. I didn't try combofix, but will sure do. I switched to AVG because of this article http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2388652,00.asp and because AVG was able to detect and remove another virus that did not show up in a full system scan in MSE. But now that I think about it, none of the other tools identified a threat called "Hacktool:win32/keygen" but after I ran them MSE did not show the threat also. Could this naming be unique to MSE? i.e., it was detected under a different name and removed by one of the tools? because MSE detected it, but could not remove it

Thanks,

Without wishing to imply in any way that you would use such a utility, a KeyGen is usually a piece of software designed to hack into and generate a Product Key for a piece of pirated software so many tools may not identify it as a threat since most users will have invited it in to workaround paying for a "proper" key.

It's quite likely that Microsoft, holding as it does the moral high ground on such matters, specifically looks out for it but I have no suggestions as to how it got into your system.

All that said, it could be worth simply uninstalling it in Control Panel>Programmes to see if the ethernet behaves itself after it's gone but I can't think why it would have anything to gain from preventing a net connection.

I suspect coincidence is hard at work here and your NIC is beginning to fall over.

Yes, I am aware of what a KeyGen is, and I think the threat identified by MSE is a false positive. I just made a system restart and noticed the MSE still running, it seems I did not disable it properly, and again it detected the same Hacktool. In all the instances that the hacktool was identified, the MSE did not point to the file causing the problem, rather it points to the process id causing the problem. I checked the process with the same ID and it was for PunkBuster, which is an anti-cheat program for online multiplayer games.

So it maybe as you suggested that this all may be a coincidence, or maybe it could be something wrong with the cables. I will try to change the cables and see what happens.

Also kindly please can you clarify more on this issue. Why is MSE better from you experience? I disabled AVG this time, and I need to completely remove one of them as it is not a good idea to keep both of them running.

sAGA: mY INTERNET HAS WORKED ALL DAY NOT LOST SIGNAL ONCE. THANKS FOR THE ADVICE.

I'm pleased to see that.

I believe it's because Microsoft is always the first to be attacked on its security vulnerabilities, they are also likely to be te first to understand the threat and update their AV accordingly. I have no highly technical data to back my claim; just that basic logical assumption and the fact that I tested it when it came out and put up a number of threats to see jhow it behaved and it went well. Since then, I've probably installed it in a couple of hundred systems for my customers and no-one has reported any problems.

I also have it installed on 3 PCs for a couple of years and I never had a problem until now. Thanks for the reply, I may just stick with it.