Hi. I am running Windows 10 Home Edition on my home computer. I have Spectrum Cable/Internet and my computer is connected to my modem via an Ethernet cable and my modem to a wireless router via cable. My network is intermittently going out on me. I am on the internet and things work fine. I leave the computer and come back and there is a yellow exclamation point over the network icon in the bottom tray and I am no longer connected. I can usually fix it by shutting off the power to the computer and then turning it back on but the same thing happens over and over. If I unplug the router and modem and then plug them back in, that doesn't seem to help at all. I have tried resetting the network adapter and that doesn't seem to work all the time. I have tried uninstalling the network adapter and it's software and then restarting the computer and that did work and it worked for over a day and I thought that I had it fixed, only to have it go out again. There isn't a specific time length that these temporary fixes work. Sometimes it is an hour and sometimes it's a day but it always reverts back to being down.
Could this be an issue with my modem itself or is there something corrupt on my computer? I don't know of any change that happened on my computer when this all started.
Some more information. I was online and my adapter was working (as it does when I restart everything) and I was looking at some pdf files on my computer and all of a sudden I looked down and there again, was the yellow exclamation point of death telling me I was again no longer connected. I then went to close the files so I could restart all over again and everything locked up. I had control of the mouse/cursor but nothing I clicked on would work. This lasted about 30 seconds and then things went black and then I got this Windows 10 error message that said that it needed to collect error info and restart. The stop code at the bottom said "CRITICAL PROCESS DIED". The 0% complete never changed and in about 30 seconds my computer attempted to restart. It locked up and I had to power down and power back up. Everything comes up again and I am again connected to my network. I am stumped. Please help.
(I was going to post a picture of the error page but don't see how to do it. How do I attach files to my posts?)
So I went to the Realtek site and downloaded the most recent driver for the Network Adapter and installed it. However, I can't really test to see if this worked because this secondary problem that is occurring. Now, when I leave the computer and return hours later (or the next morning) I get this boot issue (see attached picture)
The only way I can reboot is to power down and power back up. This has always been what I have to do to get the network adapter back to working, so I don't know if it was the new driver I installed or if it is working because I powered down and back up.
When I get this error I tried to install my Windows 10 disc and boot from that when I get this prompt but after going through the "repair my computer" steps it never seems to do anything and I keep getting this boot error message.
I downloaded and created an Easy Recovery Boot Disk and when I get this error page I even tried rebooting with that. It goes through a 3-5 minute process and in the end tells me that it couldn't find any installed version of Windows on any drive. ??? (see the picture from the Easy Recovery disk after it runs)
Guys (and girls), I really need some help here. Anyone?
Well, I found out that by installing a new driver to the Realtek Network Adapter, I did not fix the problem. I was on the computer online and left for about an hour and came back and once again was offline and the yellow exclamation point was on top of my Network icon in the tray. I restarted the computer and was again online (using Chrome as I always do) and the page blinked on and off then closed. I clicked on other things on the computer and nothing worked and was basically locked up. The screen then started blinking on and off from my desktop to blank over and over and the only way out of it was to power down.
This is becoming beyond frustrating. I hope someone is out there looking at all this and can help.
I have the full McAfee antivirus suite and Malwarebyes Premium and my computer has always been bulletproof in the past and I have run several scans on both of these and nothing has been found.
My WiFi isn't effected in any way. All other devices that connect via WiFi work fine. It is only my desktop computer connected via Ethernet cable to my modem that is effected.
It seems to be getting worse. Now when I am connected after powering off and then on (which is now the only way to correct this) things start to lock up. I'm getting more of these error messages and the only way to recover is to power down and back up.
