Fixing pc network issues.. WinSock XP Fix

I don't often post about generic PC software, but I ran across an issue recently that forced me to do some serious web searching to try to find a fix myself. My PC was losing internet connectivity in a wierd way at random times during the day. Usually around noon I'd no longer be able to browse the web, though persistent connections were working fine, and I could access sites via IP address. The problem was growing more and more persistent and annoying - going from 1x times a week to once a day. The strangest thing was that rebooting more often than not would completely fix the issue. However the day arrived when I rebooted my wonderful PC yet again and everything was dead. Panicing, I rebooted yet again and my connection returned. I thought to myself "this is it, I have to figure this thing out".

Thanks to several search engines I discovered this wonderful tool: winsockxpfix.exe (I post the filename to further assist you other poor searching folks). It seems to have done the trick of resetting my winsock settings back to factory mode, and so far my connection has remained up and running happily since I've run this tool.