Application Experience service drops internet connection

Wow, what a weird thing to have happen. Aren't computers fun

That was some excellent detective work on your part to find the timing and the service involved. You might want to use Process Monitor to see if anything stands out. e.g. some app calls the Application Experience service with a bad parameter.

I don't hold out much hope of Process Monitor helping out here, but it was the only thing that I could think of to try.

I found it from standard windows logs (right-click My Computer -> manage -> event viewer -> system and there it is). I suspect Application Experience is the culprit since its startup time seems to coincide with connection dropout.

There's a ton of information in that Process Monitor. Firefox seems to suffer from buffer overflows, is that an uncommon thing? I need to start filtering this thing...

I see the buffer overflow thing on lots of apps. I'm not sure what it means, but the apps work, so I've not looked into it.

Yep - Process Monitor shows you some (but not all) of the stuff that goes on - and that is a bunch of stuff to sift thru.

You can try running Process Monitor after booting the computer into the safe mode with networking. In that mode, the computer should be doing fewer things. These steps might help too: Troubleshoot Application Conflicts by Performing a Clean Startup

I'll update the situation with more info:
Application Experience is not the culprit. I turned it to not start automatically but connection still drops at 3rd and 34th minute hourly and restores automatically 30-60 seconds afterwards. Windows does recognize this connection dropout in Network and Sharing center (red X between network and internet).

I don't really know what to make of Process Monitor. It would help to know what I'm looking for there.

My non-windows startup items (from MSconfig) are Mozilla Maintenance Service, Steam Client Service and InstallDriver Table Manager from Macrovision. I wonder what that latest is?

What happens if you...
...let the drop out occur
...let the connection heal itself
...turn the clock back a minute or two.
Does the drop out happen again?

I changed Windows clock back a few minutes after connection drop-out and the connection didn't drop again.

UsernameIssues said:

What happens if you...
...let the drop out occur
...let the connection heal itself
...turn the clock back a minute or two.
Does the drop out happen again?

Aapo said:

I changed Windows clock back a few minutes after connection drop-out and the connection didn't drop again.

Thanks for checking that. When I posted that suggested test, I hoped that scheduled tasks would repeat if the time changed like that. I was not in a place where I could test before posting. My brief test today seems to indicate that a scheduled task does not repeat just because one sets the clock back a bit.

I'm not sure what to check next. Process Monitor can be a bit much to learn.

I like to run minimalistic system and keep processes to minimum, except for Firefox tabs. I checked that there's 9 scheduled tasks that came with Windows. None of them have activated in the past 30 days. I've probably tweaked some Internet setting that I can no longer remember which would be the cause of my problem. I've checked cable modem settings they seem fine too, and the internet connection runs only (TCP/IPv4) protocol.

Then there's that Network Adapter (Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller with version 7.46.610.2011) kind of old, but I haven't found newer version. I don't know what its settings do but I'll list them here for more info:
Auto Disable Gigabit: disabled
Flow Control: enabled
Green Ethernet: disabled
Interrupt Moderation: enabled
IPv4 Checksum Offload: Rx & Tx enabled
Jumbo Frame: disabled
Large Send Offload v2(Ipv4): enabled
Large Send Offload v2(Ipv6): enabled
Network address: not available
Priority & VLAN: Priority & VLAN enabled
Receive Buffers: 512
Receive Side Scaling: disabled
Shutdown Wake-On-Lan: enabled
Speed & Duplex: auto negotiation
TCP Checksum Offload (IPv4): Rx & Tx enabled
TCP Checksum Offload (IPv6): Rx & Tx enabled
Transmit Buffers: 128
UDP Checksum Offload (IPv4): Rx & Tx enabled
UDP Checksum Offload (IPv6): Rx & Tx enabled
Wake on Magic Packet: enabled
Wake on pattern match: enabled
WOL & Shutdown Link Speed: Not Speed Down

I still don't know what caused the problem, but it seems to have disappeared as I switched off the power of my modem, waited a few minutes and switched it back on. I haven't had disconnects for a few days now.
Thanks for your help trying to solve this problem, UsernameIssues.