Techno-no-no-NO

Okay, help a lady out, here.

I'm having Internet issues. I'll be browsing along, doing my thing, when suddenly, it freezes. Nothing will load, I'll just see the whirly little circle going round and round for a minute or so until the screen gets a dinosaur image.

Shut up, dinosaur. 

It's random. Sometimes it freezes for one minute, sometimes for five minutes. Sometimes only once or twice in an hour, sometimes ten times in an hour (you can imagine how frustrating that is). It strikes, inevitably, right when I play a word in Lexulous, or right as I hit "send" on that important email, or right as I'm trying to list something on eBay or Etsy. It's been like this since I got the laptop in January, but it has gotten worse in the last couple of months.

So I'm asking for suggestions. Before you start, please do not suggest the following:

1. "Delete your cookies/cache/history!" That's the first thing I tried, obviously. I'm a techo-phobe, but I'm not an idiot.

2. "Don't have so many tabs open at once!" That's not the problem, either. My ancient desktop from 2006 did not have this problem when I had email, Facebook, Twitter and my blog open all at once. (What? I like multi-tasking.)

3. "Try Chrome/Firefox/Internet Explorer/Obscure Browser!" I use Chrome. This also happens on Firefox (I tried). Internet Explorer is just crap.

4. "Uninstall and then reinstall your browser!" That's what the very nice young man told me to do in an online help chat a couple of weeks ago. It worked for one evening, and then went right back to being even worse.

5. "Have you tried your computer's Troubleshooter?" Many times. Many. Times.

In the limited amount of information I can glean from various desperate Google searches, I've discovered that it might be the wi-fi card in my computer. No other computer or device has this problem on our wireless internet connection in this house. In fact, I've been known to roll my eyes when the Internet freezes on me, grab my iPhone, and wait it out. Oh, and for what it's worth, when it freezes, there is no yellow or red flag icon next to the internet connection bars.

Never a flag to warn me that my Internet is being a jerk.

I'm really hoping to resolve this soon without sitting through another painfully long help chat with the Dell people (which I then get kicked out of because--you guessed it--my connection freezes). I also don't want to spend a gazillion dollars just on diagnosis, when that money could go towards the cure. I had a sound card issue six weeks ago, and when I took it to Best Buy for a Geek Squad check-up, it worked perfectly. It was only broken at home, apparently. (I think computers hate me.)

So...have at it. Please! I'm open to suggestions for easy at-home fixes that a notorious techno-phobe can handle. (Let me clarify that I just found out today that putting my phone up by my ear while not on a phone call automatically activates Siri. I did not know this and found out in front of a small group of amused teenagers. Sigh. Old people, right? Get off my lawn.)

Leave a comment. Help a lady out!