I have been havong some weird problems LATELY with my network.

For a while everything has gone SMOOTHLY without a hitch.  All of a sudden, for no paticular reason, the network started to go crazy.

Before I continue, I will clue you in as to the set up we have.  We use a netopia modem with a dsl connection, then pass the ethernet-5 cable to a Linksys Wireless-B Broadband Router  BEFW11S4.  I added the RECENT driver to the router and have not messed with the settings much at all.

We started having some major issues ONE day out of the blue.  Long story short, instead of connecting and automatically letting the network give devices an IP address, we had to manually set up each and every component in network connection properties, assigning an IP address, default gateway, and primary DNS to every compnent.  Very clunky, but we had access to the internet then.

The main issue, oddly, is Windows Media Player 11.  Whenever I try to log onto an online music DISTRIBUTOR, like URGE or Napter Lite, the sites come up fine, but whenever we try to stream or download a song off of those sites, the entire network crashes.  This happens anytime WMP plays a file off of the internet on any of the machines, OSs varying from XP to Vista Home Premium.

For example, I might go on to amazon.com, see a cd I might consider buying, click the preview song link for WMP, WMP comes up, and with no warning dialoges whatsoever, crashes the entire network.  No one is able to access the internet, and we have to go manually reset the modem and router.

My questions are simply these.  Any ideas/solutions to the not being able to automatically connect to the internet?  Also, why does it crash when WMP tries to do anything with internet connectivity?

Thanks for your help beforehand!It seems that either your router or your modem has gone crazy. I suspect that the router has some problems.
You may try to change his operating system with the latest for this router (firmware update) - pay attention, write the actual settings of the router (firewall settings, connections settings, dhcp settings etc) so you may be able to "re-do" settings after update. It is not complicated, but if you don't know (now) where to look after those settings, you certainly will not be able to recreate those.

Also, you may look on internet for similar problems. (Look what I found: http://www.allaboutjake.com/network/linksys/befw11s4/ )