There are now 4 laptops in the house, two with Vista and 2 with XP. All were working fine connecting to the internet via a Netgear router. Three are still ok but my daughter has come back from University and hers (an Acer Travelmate 2420 with XP) is now playing up.

I have reset everything (assuming the settings were changed on the university network) so it is the same as the other XP machine (a Dell D600) and on booting up it connects to the router and is fine, but it drops the connection after 5 minutes or so and then won't reconnect. Sometimes the beacon light on the toolbar shows it is connected (but isn't) and sometimes there is a cross through it but either way it isn't working.

Any suggestions to help sort this out would be welcome.

more than likely her notebook is infected...university networks are known for all kinds of exploits and viruses.

Even so she should not have problems connecting. How does she connect to her internet at university? It may sound like a silly question but does her laptop have a wireless card because some older laptops were not always fitted with one. Or does she use a USB wireless stick?
Matthew
HP