Drop-outs

All web sites or just particular ones?

Its not uncommon for some internet radio web sites, especially higher kbps bandwidth sites to drop out or more accurately stop and restart periodically on occasion often due to a combination of high load on the server and/or limited bandwidth between the site and you somewhere along the internet pipeline, especially during peak listening hours.

Try the link Almarg provided and tell us what the #s are.

That's 3-4 X faster download time than I am getting currently on my wireless laptop and I do not have any problem, so it does not appear likely your internet connection bandwidth is a problem.

If you get dropouts at similar intervals on all internet stations, then some thing on your PC may be the limiting factor.

Usually it is either due to insufficient memory and/or other programs running that consume memory and/or cpu time.

I have not tried newer versions of Windows but my experience has been 2Gb or less of memory does not cut it for reliable streaming. You generally need at least 4 Gb.

If you right click on your taskbar and launch task manager you can see what programs are running and consuming resources.

These are likely candidates but unfortunately there are many things that can interfere in that the PC is never fully dedicated just to any one program or function.