Windows Media Center with Extenders Help

I have Media Center running on my desktop, and I use Extender on my Xboxes to watch TV. My network connection gets interrupted whenever I use an Explorer window (IE, and occasionally File Explorer). It's really odd to watch in Task Manager Performance tab.

I'll sit here, logged in, watching the Performance tab. The Extender is pulling data from the desktop just fine.

Then, I launch IE. Still fine.

Then I navigate to any website, and network usage drops to 0.

If I change the focus away from the Explorer window (back to Task Manager for example), the Network traffic resumes. If I do this fast enough, the Extender doesn't even notice the hiccup, and just keeps chugging along (there's a huge spike in Network traffic to make up for the lack of transmission).

The super odd part about all of this is that I had somehow fixed the problem a while ago. I have no idea what I did (I likely didn't do anything). I definitely know what caused it to stop working, though. I was writing a Windows Phone app in Visual Studio Express, then VS locked up my entire computer. I had to do a hard reset to get it back. After the reset, I've had this problem show up again (along with another weird network problem that I haven't seen before).

I've checked on the driver info for my Mobo, and I've got a few new drivers that I want to apply to see if they'll help.

Here are my questions:

1) Would updating my drivers put me at risk for invalidating my DRM licenses and make it so I can't watch the TV I have recorded right now?

2) Any other suggestions on what could be going on? I'd really like to be able to go back to using my computer while my wife is watching TV.

You mean, when you use IE while the extender is in use, the extender is connected and streaming Video right? Then when you try to go to a website, it blocks the traffic to the Xbox?

I would not worry about updating Drivers, just read all of the documentation for the new drivers before you install it. If you are worried about losing DRM licenses you can back these up:

Backing Up and Restoring of DRM Licenses (Windows)

If it is IE that causes this interruption, then try using Chrome or another browser, IE is still part of the OS, maybe it steals your Internet Focus.

You should also bring this to the attention to one of the Xbox Support boards, or perhaps there is a tech support that is not costly, I think they have Forums there.

Xbox Live - Xbox.com

Thanks for the help. I applied the driver last night. I didn't hurt the DRM, but it didn't fix the issue either. I hadn't thought about the link between IE and Windows... I'll try a different browser tonight.

I think I'm also going to hunt for a sysinternals utility that can monitor my network traffic more closely to see if I can find out what exactly is blocking the traffic.

Is "Internet Focus" an actual thing? If it is, that's probably what is causing my problem.

I don't know if it is a real thing, but your system is acting like something is taking over your Internet and diverting the signal from your device. It shouldn't be happening.

It may just be the way the Xbox system is designed, when using the Computer (or IE) it will pause any output to the extender. Check the Xbox support forum I linked to, and ask someone in there if this is the case.