Connection on Ethernet PC drops, but remains fine on wireless

[onlydan]

Hi, I'm having a really strange problem with my network at home, whereas my home PC seems to drop its connection after a few minutes of being online, seemingly without realising this.

I'm running an Virgin Media connection (I'm in the UK) through a Linksys WRT54GUK router, which is connected to my Windows XP SP2 PC via ethernet. I also connect to this wirelessly via my MacBook (OSX 10.5.4) and Wii, and occasionally to my Xbox 360 via a second ethernet.

Anyway, my laptop, wii and xbox all connect to the internet fine, as does the PC immediately after startup, which is usually just enough time for Messenger to sign in, or if I'm really fast to open up Thunderbird and download my emails, but then the connection seems to totally drop.

When I go into the control panel and then Network Connections, the relevant connection displays as "connected", until I try unplugging/reattaching the ethernet and then the connection typically sticks at "Acquiring Network Address", or sometimes at "renewing IP" (if I hit repair).

I thought this could be a spyware problem, but a search with AdAware in Safe Mode, then an AVG Virus Check in normal mode returned no real results, and after clearing away the few problems they did find, the situation persists.

I'd be most grateful for any help anyone can provide with this matter, as I'm out of ideas to settle the problem.

Thanks for your time,

Dan