What brand is it? Typically they have troubleshooting forums, for hardware.

We had terrible time with NetGear.... I won't buy them anymore.
I had a netgear router that worked sometimes and not others.
It confused all the things we tried to fix our internet connection, which was freezing or not connecting, then working fine...etc.
In the end it was the router after all.

We have a Linksys one now...much much better.

I added all the other details and forgot the brand!

It's a Dell Inspiron and I've spent hours on their FAQ and trouble shooting pages over the past few days. They have plenty of start up problems and solutions, but no shut down ones.

Its a Dell router?

The router may be defective.

No it's not a Dell router.

It's made by my server (the biggest one in Australia) and usually comes free (?) when opening a new networking account with that particular server. My account with them is old but I wanted to upgrade to the multi computer router, so my daughter bought this one for me from their product's shop.

I only have 2Gb of memory at the moment, but will add more when finances allow. I did buy more for my now defunct desktop which is now waiting to go to the disposal site. What a shame the cards aren't interchangeable.

BTW...I just went back to that holding down the power button link you gave me Jo*Mar. I didn't notice at the time, but this question of mine is there on the Google search (cached) page.

Koala....

I am sending you a PM from my son explaining why the computer was acting the way it did.

The bottom line is that "something" (probably hardware malfunction) was doing it.

He has some steps on how to look for it... which seem difficult to me, but I'll send them via PM for you to save.

2gigs of RAM is a good amount. Our old laptop only has 1 gig, and this one has one 1 gig, and the new one we just got has 3.
One thing I did learn about routers, is that, they have a little memory inside...a mini computer. Yours just might be too big for your system. Our Linksys router has 4 ports and two antennae.

The old NetGear router we had before gave us endless trouble. It would lock me up and knock me off the net, etc. The new Linksys has been fine so far.
This is it:
http://www.amazon.com/Linksys-WRT54G...2437376&sr=8-1

(I see the price has gone up! we only paid $45 for it when we got it.)

Check your PMs...

Please notice his statement about USB vs other ports. If that large router is hooked to your USB port, you need to install a driver for it.

Thank you very much mrsD. It was very kind of you and your son to send me all that information and I'll go through it all later.

It closed down properly again last night, after I turned off the router.
The router is Wi-Fi mrsD, so hooked up wirelessly .... not via a USB port.

So you only have one computer using it now? One cable going into it from the DSL, and only wireless for all your units?

We have our router hooked by cable to 2 units. And two units to use the wireless. I thought you had a similar arrangement?

If your picture is accurate....it is a NetGear. (I did not like NetGear at all).

If you get the name and model number, Kevin says he can try to look it up.

I'm stumped with the Wifi/router being part of shut down issue and that connects into the modem... so maybe the router or the modem??

maybe something to test ?? - If you can do a test by plugging in with a cable -temporarily to the modem only , and not use the router at all - to see if the normal shut down works that way - that would most likely point to a router problem.

and if it has the same shut down problem then a closer look at some heavy duty scanners and maybe doing a "hijack this" log.
http://free.antivirus.com/hijackthis/

but hopefully mrsD's son has tips for the running processes investigation.

but some trojans can make the computers do weird things like stay online and restart...


My set up is phone jack to modem to D link wireless router & the signal goes out to wifi card in the
computers.

Yes....at the moment there's only the one computer in use (the laptop), but I will have the desktop up and running later for hubby to use. Also when my DD was here, she was able to log into her own laptop (wirelessly) as well.

There are no cables attached. There are 4 Ethanet ports on the router, but I'm using the Wi-Fi so none of those ports are in use at the moment. The only things plugged into the router are the electricity cord and the phone cord.

No it's not a NetGear router. I didn't have a photo of mine at the time, so I used that picture as an example because it looked similar. Mine is a Thomson TG782T. Here's a link to their TG585.....the first one looks the same as mine: http://www.thomson.net/GlobalEnglish...s/default.aspx