Acquiring Network Connection... forever

[harmonics]

I have a problem that seems to go something like this:

If I leave my computer idle for a while (30 min or longer) and come back it won' t be connected to the internet, and has a system tray icon trying to acquire the network address that fails eventually. If I restart the computer only then I can connect to the internet. My girlfriend called our cable provider and they seemed to think my network card is bad. It is a Marvell Yukon 88E8053 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller. I guess it could be going out, but it wouldn't work at all if the network card was bad would it? It is built-in to my mobo....

Would the easiest thing for me to do be buy a cheap network card and see if that fixes my problem?

Please any comments are appreciated!

[kaveman1969]

The same thing happened to me last summer after power was restored following a bad storm. I would lose my internet sporadically. Got on the phone with my ISP, and after troubleshooting, connected my modem to my USB port and presto back online. My ethernet controller was also on the motherboard. Bought a new network card and all is well. Hope this helps.

[z1p]

Check to see if your PC is set to power down the network adapter to save power. (Go to the network connection and bring up its Properties. Then switch to the 'Power management' tab. There is an option to allow the adapter to be powered down, make sure it is not selected.)