Hi Colin, thanks for persevering with me.
No problem at all, we shall both need some perseverence as we try to diagnose (as best we can) what's going on here, but otherwise I'm glad to try to help you if I can. Just tell me if I don't explain something well enough for you to follow me. I will then be happy to try again & won't be put off in any way at all.
When the PC disses the box the online light goes off and then the LAN light goes off. Sometimes the online light comes on but the LAN button doesn't. In fact after the PC disses the box and is switched off...the LAN light doesn't come on again when I'm using the laptop wirelessly on the internet yet I'm sure it was always on before this all happened.
Obviously I could be wrong, but that sequence suggests to me that whatever is happening, it is causing the router to fall-over & reboot. When this happens the sequence on the lights would be similiar (or normally would be) to what they display when it's initially powered on. In my experience, they tend to try and bring the various interfaces (LAN, DSL, Online) up first before starting the WLAN (which is really just an extension of the Wired LAN ports). So, I could potentially understand if something exchanged between the W8 PC and the router caused your PC's LAN connection to 'hang-up' and the router to reboot. In that scenario, the router might reboot and re-establish the DSL, Online and LAN (and those lights would normally all come on). However if the PC's LAN connection was left in a 'funny' state by this, it might not connect properly, and so the LAN light might not come on until you try to access it wirelessly from your lappy. Does that make sense? ATM it's only a theory, but we could try to see if that 'fits' what you can see when this happens?
Seimens - nice!; presumably this is the Orange Live Box? I have a friend who may have/or know about these. I will try to ask him if he knows how we might be able to connect (say from your lappy) to the router to see a little more about what it thinks it knows about what's going on. If you already know how to do this, let me know, and then perhaps we can work out together what it can tell us, if anything!
is it "overloading" the box or summat like that?
Possibly 'summat like that'! ATM I doubt that it would be 'overloading' it, but it _may_ be sending something that your router doesn't like and/or can't cope with. That is a possibility. It's been known in the past that e.g. there have been problems with routers & newer versions of Windows over things like passwords or how well they display their screens to you in a browser. These are generally as much to do with the fact that a new version of windows generally comes with a new version of IE, and it's that that causes some of the issues that have been seen in the past. Haven't (till now) heard of it pushing a router over, but it's not beyond belief.
W8 is certainly different. Not just the way it looks, or how you're supposed to interact with it, which may be fine for all the tablet surfers, but it is really abysmal for those of us who still wish to use the familiar desktop. But it has some technical differences too: for example, the previous windows we know load everything from scratch every time you restart the machine unless you had previously hibernated it. W8 doesn't do quite that. When you close it down, it sort of hibernates instead (writing a copy of the PC's memory at the time to disc). When you restart it, instead of reloading everything from scratch, it restores the hibernated copy of your PC's memory and 'reinitialises' the drivers again instead. This makes it load faster. However, there is a chance that this might not quite work as intended with some devices. I can't say if this is happening here, but it is one significant difference with W8, and so it must at least be a _possible_ explanation that this appears to you to be W8-specific. You may well be right!
Can't say precisely but think it's a few minutes and this has happened since we got the PC first time. Phoned the shop/guy where we got it from and was told switch box off for 5 mins then on again - we did and it worked for the internet connection then though cannot remember if it dissed the box again at that time as we didn't stay on PC long.
That's helpful. The 'few minutes' (accurate enough for me!) suggests that W8 will have finished it's 'fast (re)load' as described above. Was the LAN light on at that point? What the guy told you to do, might suggest simply that he thinks that your router box had not properly connected to the internet. But as he wasn't there to see your lights, it could be that or it could be that the LAN hadn't connected. The fact that it then falls over again after a) the internet connection is available, and b) presumably you try to use the browser, suggests - as you have said from the start - that 'summat' that your new PC is sending over to the internet via your router is upsetting the router.
At this point I can't yet imagine what that might be. However, can you tell me what typically you are doing with your PC when it happens? e.g. simply using the browser (any particular site, or not?), or possibly using some 'app'. Even if you are not yourself doing anything other than browsing, that doesn't mean that W8 isn't doing something in the background that you don't realise e.g. downloading new patches, or new anti-virus files, or whatever.
It is hard, but not impossible, to try to diagnose these things in this way. It is always better if someone is actually there on site with you, because they can literally 'see' things happening that will take us some time in this thread to do this way. So, if you can persuade/cajole/threaten the guy to come over to your place and take a look for himself at it, that _may_ get you a quicker result.
In the meantime I will try to find out more about the Orange Live Box.
Good luck, and hang in there.