Windows 7: IE 8 started acting up

Hi, What are you using for a firewall/anti-virus? Might want to check the logs, to see if there is any correlation. You might be getting a false positive and your connection thru IE is shut down.

Last fall I was playing a game, that is launched thru a browser interface. After a few minutes my connection in IE would stop. I checked the logs and sure enough my AV thought the game .exe was attacking it, thus shutting down the connection and the exe. I made the exe exempt (I knew it was safe) and my AV didn't bother with it anymore.
This was my situation, don't know if it applies to yours, but thought I would put it out there.

You might also try resetting winsock to fix that browser problem

1. Click start, type cmd in the Start Search box, right-click cmd.exe, click Run as administrator, and then press Continue.


2. Type netsh winsock reset at the command prompt, and then press ENTER.

Note If the command is typed incorrectly, you will receive an error message. Type the command again. When the command is completed successfully, a confirmation appears, followed by a new command prompt. Then, go to step 3.


3. Type exit, and then press ENTER. You should be prompted to reboot, if not you should reboot and test.