Out of the blue, my wireless connection drops off at home. It is a royal pain. Everyone else in the house is connected and I get dropped!!
Just a suggestion; have you considered downloading and burning a bootable Linux disc and see if that works for you? I believe the price for a blank CD or DVD disc is less than that for a postage stamp and roughly equivalent if you choose to use a rewritable disc.
What could it hurt? The bootable discs will not touch your machine and will allow you to try them as much as you like, then you can reboot the machine without the disc to go back to your standard configuration at your leisure.