Well, I seem to have my problem solved also. The local technicians went about it in a different manner and so far I've had no problems either ( three days now). Their fix was to replace the 2wire router with a Motorola/ Netopia 3347 something another that is usually  used for business customers. I had read about this on other forums, and possibly this one somewhere, and was hopeful they'd try it. I had also spent hours on the phone, and while I don't think the specific changes the previous Poster mentioned were tried, the 2wire firmware was updated and other configurations were tried. The strangest thing in my case was the other computers in my household did not not cause the disconnect problems I was experiencing. We had started  to have problems occasionally of the same kind (gateway alert, no dsl connection screen) but since buying a new laptop it was constant. One Poster mentioned the same thing happening to him and wondered about windows 7 conflicts, but we have 2 other win 7 computers that didn't cause the problem, one the same brand but a different model as my recent purchase. I'm not sure what type wi-fi adapter they have but they both have AMD processors, while the one I just bought has an I3 Intel and is much faster. The thing that troubles me is I've read of people who thought they had the problem solved by repacing modems/routers or reconfiguring just to have it reappear weeks or months later  . For now I'm keeping my fingers crossed and the best of luck to you all that have solved your problem. Also my hats off to the local techs that  worked on my issue, They were determined to find the solution  and their attitude made it much easier to deal  with.