Internet Connection Being Dropped

Hello everyone

 

Inspiron 8600
XP SP2 fully patched
Dell True Mobile

 

My daughter (from UK) is in Australia on holiday and is having a problem with her internet connection. She is using a chatroom to speak to us here in the UK

 

When she first boots up using the wireless connection in the chatroom the machine detects 2 wireless networks, a private network and the chatroom. She can connect to the chatroom, signal is very good.

The internet is incredibly slow and will not open a second tab in IE7.  It struggles to send a plain text email and an attachment is out of the question. She has noticed that others around her do not seem to have this problem.

 

After 30mins or so the machine starts dropping the connection.  Occasionally a reboot will allow her to connect again but it does not last any time at all.  Very often the only network discovered is the private one (it is always there) and a refresh does not discover the chatroom. The next day when she goes back she can connect again and it will work for the same amount of time before dropping the connection.

 

It is not easy to troubleshoot this by phone. I have checked that Network Adapter/Power Management "Allow the computer to turn off the device" is not checked

 

I am wondering about Wireless Zero Configuration Service.  It is set to "Automatic" Could this be causing the problem?  I think it is needed to discover wireless networks.  Is this correct?

 

XP itself is running as fast as usual, it is just the internet which is struggling to open a page at all.
Wireless was working fine here before she left.

 

Any suggestions will be most gratefully received.  Please bear in mind that I will have to do this by phone and my daughter does not know her way around XP very well.

 

Thank you all very much