Brand new computer, but flashes of poor internet connection

[splashpot]

Just bought a brand new Dell 6000. I bought a seperate hard drive though and installed it myself. Therefore I erased Windows and all the standard drivers/settings. I'm pretty sure I loaded most of the necessary drivers back onto it, but I get these flashes of about 1 minute where I can't connect to any website. I don't know if this has anything to do with some of the settings being off or not. Do I have to open some ports or something? I don't really know too much about that. I am on wireless, but this still shouldn't be happening. Anyone know how I can improve my connection?

[BusterStacks]

try connecting with an ethernet cord to see if this problem occurs specifically when you are wireless.

[wildzer0]

I had a similar problem when i first started using wireless. It turned out that the heating pipes in the walls were causing interference. Moving my computer fixed the problem. Make sure you're getting a good strong signal with low interference. Also, try what the other poster said - see if the problem goes away when you connect with an ethernet cable.

[splashpot]

I don't think it's that. My brother uses the wireless on his laptop too and his computer is right next to mine. Additionally, before I got this laptop, I had an old one and used wireless. This problem didn't happen on the old laptop. The only thing I can think of is some driver that I haven't installed or some port that is supposed to be open that isn't.