Like many on this forum, for several months I experienced random connection
failures and/or loss of connection while browsing. (This did not happen on
the two betas but only after upgrading from Beta 2 to VHP). Tried all the
obvious things but nothing helped. Finally did what I should have done in
the first place....went to the MS Knowledge Base and found two articles that
seemed to apply (KB 936213 and 936214). These articles concern IE
optimizing, resetting, and troubleshooting compatibility problems, and
consist of many involved methods and steps. I ran through all the methods
and steps, and nothing seemed to change. However, when I rebooted, a popup
appeared stating that "Windows has blocked some startup programs" and
inviting me to click to see list of blocked programs. The list shows 7 MS
programs and Avast Antivirus. (If anyone is interested, I can give you the
list of programs). All show classification of "Permitted"

The results: My dialup connection has worked flawlessly with no connection
failures or disconnects for over two weeks. An added bonus: The popup
asking "Do you want to disconnect" when closing IE is back (it had
disappeared on VHP installation).

Don't know exactly what I did, since I did not choose to disable any startup
programs when going through the KB steps. Only know that it worked and
there seems to be no other problems. Any of you MVPs have any idea what
happened?