Just to give you an update on this...
The disconnects continued... no matter what I did... nothing seemed to work and it became such a pain in the butt.
But stop-press.... the problem has now ceased! The solution...? Turned out to be the monitor. The old one (on OH's PC, was still functioning just fine - or so we thought) but it was a bit small, so overdue for an upgrade to a larger screen.
We decided upon another BenQ. (
This one if anyone is interested.) It's a different model to mine (a gamer) but it's really nice. There is a row of touch-sensitive, tiny control buttons on the bottom right-hand edge. Very convenient and user-friendly.
However, this isn't a monitor review, lol. I want to mention that when I was swapping the two monitors, I was shocked at how very (and I mean
very) hot the transformer of the old monitor was.
I could hardly hold it without flinching. Yikes! I hate to think how potentially dangerous this might have been. It was "old tech" so I really should have checked it out more thoroughly, my bad.
Anyway... since setting up the new monitor, the disconnection problems have magically ceased completely. So it looks as if that old monitor had become dodgy with age (it was about 6 yrs old.) I'm still a tad surprised that it influenced a hard-wired internet connection... but the proof appears to be that all is well again.
The new BenQs don't have bulky transformers - but it has been a good wake-up reminder to regularly check the ones which are still in situ.