Network stops working!?

My wife has WinXP Pro on an Averatec 3150P. It has a built-in wifi
card and a VIA Rhine II wired LAN card.

She's had this system for about 9 months now and never had a problem
with it. In the last month or so the networking has started to get
flaky.

First the wifi card started "going away." It would just disappear from
the list of network connections. Rebooting the system would sometimes
restore it. Rebooting and going into the BIOS, making no changes and
exiting & rebooting, fixed it more often.

Next the wired LAN started crapping out. I don't believe that one
actually vanished from the connection list, it just stopped working.
Now both LAN connections are out. They're listed as active in the
network connections, but she can't ping or anything. Rebooting does
still fix it for a while.

She thinks this may have started when she left the system on standby
inside its case, and it might have gotten too warm, but that's a guess.

Any suggestions? Is the Averatec just flaky and it's getting flakier?
Any ideas for anything that might help this??

Thanks,
Gary
remove xxx's to email

Gary Fritz <fritzxxx@xxxfrii.com> wrote:
> First the wifi card started "going away." It would just disappear
> from the list of network connections.
> Next the wired LAN started crapping out.

Anyone? Any suggestions on what might be causing this, and what to do
(short of wiping and re-installing the system) to fix it?

Gary