Unexplainable Network Connection Loss

[Guest]

I am running two identical machines on a corporate network where I am the
administrator and consistently lose the internet connection on one machine
while the other runs just fine. These machines have built in NIC's (VIA
VT6102 Rhine II Fast Ethernet A) and while we don't seem to have any problems
with the NIC's, it seems that when I load Office on to the one machine and
any and all updates that I suddenly lose the internet as well as occasionally
the connection to the server that I use to synchronize my files with. But
when I load all the updates on the other machine without Office it doesn't
lose it's connection. I will be putting Office on that machine soon and don't
want to lose the connection.

Any ideas as to what is wrong?

 

[Guest]

By far the most common cause of connection-drop problems is the presence of
(defective) power-saving features on the NIC. Many cards/chips seem to suffer
from this. Answer is to see if the adaptor entry in Device Manager has any
option to turn power-saving off.

Since this kind of problem is often highly intermittent, the fact you'd just
installed Office might be coincidentlal.

 

[Guest]

I'll give it a try and let you know if it works.

 

[Guest]

Had once a similar problem...
A bad contact between the cable and the card socket.
Gently touch your cable connector to see if you have connection-drops.
If so replace the NIC.