[Znod]

Originally Posted by Dressmaker

I recently (end of January '08) purchased a Gateway laptop with Vista Home Premium (32 Bit) OS. I started having problems with internet connection to the point where I had the system re-install itself from the beginning (and maybe I didn't need to do that - I thought I had messed up the system by installing/uninstalling some programs - Word 07, etc.).

After I had the system reinstall itself, things were fine again for a short time.

I'm not even sure I can explain the problem! It seems that I can either work with e-mail or work with the Internet, but not both at the same time. I'll be in e-mail, receiving/connected just fine, then click on a link to the internet (within an email) and it goes to the browser window, says "connecting" and I get what I call the "wheel of death" - the little Vista circle that just sits there spinning. Then when I try to access the Internet from the shortcut on the desktop I still get the same thing. Then I try to go back to e-mail and it is no longer working!

I close out everything, shut down the connection, restart the computer, and then I can (maybe) get into IE. I have re-set IE7 several times and this clears the problem for a short time but it keeps coming back.

I uninstalled Norton and am running Avast now, having read in several posts here that Norton doesn't work well with Vista.

When IE7 reports that is is not responding, the error report that comes up says "rundll32" is not working or "Win 32" is not working. Not being that computer tech I have no idea what this means.

Other info that may be helpful is that I'm on a dial up connection, and my ISP assures me that it isn't something on their end. We have an HP Pavilion computer that uses the same dial up and we do not have the same IE7 problems with the HP that I'm having with the laptop.

I'm hoping someone can offer some suggestions here - I've searched the previous threads and haven't come across anything that seems to answer this question.

Thanks in advance, everyone!

You could also try turning off any IE add-one that are not essential to you. And, you may need to install the Vista reliability updates. I don't envy you doing so with dial-up. Maybe you could borrow a broadband connection to do the updates.