Dead NIC?

[Emanuele D'Arrigo]

Hi everybody!

Manu here, from the UK. Experiencing total loss of connectivity from a
-wired- XP computer at home. It doesn't want to connect to the DHCP.
The laptop I'm typing from, connected wirelessly through the same
router and cable modem have no problem.

Ipconfig shows the ominous APIPA address 169.254.182.58 followed by
subnet mask 255.255.0.0. The Default Gateway field is empty. Dhcp
results enabled.

Attempts to /renew result in the message "An error occurred while
renewing the interface Local Area Connection 2 : unable to contact
your DHCP server. Request timed out."

The lights from the NIC and on the router seem normal, showing a 100Mb
connection. I have changed the cable and ports, just in case. The NIC,
an NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller is integrated on the
motherboard.

Peculiar, possibly unrelated thing that used to happen even when the
computer was able to connect: in the Network Connections window, Right-
Mouse-Click on the connection's icon would take forever to show an
effect. And sometimes wouldn't show at all. The window would do
nothing and only a click onto another icon (eventually) would select
it. A similar behaviour is exhibited by the two 1394 Connection #
icons in the same window.

I've tried a few times to uninstall the NIC through the Device
Manager. Succeeded a few times, but with no result. Now, after many
other different tests/trials/attempts to fix the problem, including
setting static IPs and resetting the tcp/ip through netsh, I've tried
to uninstall the card again and the uninstall window seems to be
frozen, for what is now about 5 minutes.

In the meantime, after maybe 10 minutes, the RMB on the Network
Connection had its effects and I now have access to its properties. In
past attempts I've tried to set the speed/duplex choice to Force 100
Full Duplex and Autonegotiate for 100 FD. Both setting would cause the
window to freeze for longer than 5-10 minutes. Full autonegotiation,
the original setting, seems to be the only one that sticks.

It's now probably 15 minutes since I tried to remove the device and
the Confirm Device Removal is still frozen. The Network Connection
window at least shows a disabled connection now but I had to kill the
Device Manager. Restarting it doesn't show the reassuring red cross
confirming the NIC has been uninstalled as I've seen it do a few times
hours ago.

I've now restarted the computer for the Nth time. I'm uninstalling the
NIC from the Device Manager as the first thing after logon. It's
taking its time as usual. It's 2.45am and I better go to sleep. I'll
leave it to do its thing until the morning.

Right now I'm considering disabling the NIC from the BIOS and buying a
new NIC to plug in, or maybe one of those wireless USB sticks. If
anybody has any idea of what can be done short of reinstalling XP or
changing the motherboard it'd be very appreciated.

Manu

 

[Michael W. Ryder]

Hi everybody!

Manu here, from the UK. Experiencing total loss of connectivity from a
-wired- XP computer at home. It doesn't want to connect to the DHCP.
The laptop I'm typing from, connected wirelessly through the same
router and cable modem have no problem.

Ipconfig shows the ominous APIPA address 169.254.182.58 followed by
subnet mask 255.255.0.0. The Default Gateway field is empty. Dhcp
results enabled.

Attempts to /renew result in the message "An error occurred while
renewing the interface Local Area Connection 2 : unable to contact
your DHCP server. Request timed out."

The lights from the NIC and on the router seem normal, showing a 100Mb
connection. I have changed the cable and ports, just in case. The NIC,
an NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller is integrated on the
motherboard.

Peculiar, possibly unrelated thing that used to happen even when the
computer was able to connect: in the Network Connections window, Right-
Mouse-Click on the connection's icon would take forever to show an
effect. And sometimes wouldn't show at all. The window would do
nothing and only a click onto another icon (eventually) would select
it. A similar behaviour is exhibited by the two 1394 Connection #
icons in the same window.

I've tried a few times to uninstall the NIC through the Device
Manager. Succeeded a few times, but with no result. Now, after many
other different tests/trials/attempts to fix the problem, including
setting static IPs and resetting the tcp/ip through netsh, I've tried
to uninstall the card again and the uninstall window seems to be
frozen, for what is now about 5 minutes.

In the meantime, after maybe 10 minutes, the RMB on the Network
Connection had its effects and I now have access to its properties. In
past attempts I've tried to set the speed/duplex choice to Force 100
Full Duplex and Autonegotiate for 100 FD. Both setting would cause the
window to freeze for longer than 5-10 minutes. Full autonegotiation,
the original setting, seems to be the only one that sticks.

It's now probably 15 minutes since I tried to remove the device and
the Confirm Device Removal is still frozen. The Network Connection
window at least shows a disabled connection now but I had to kill the
Device Manager. Restarting it doesn't show the reassuring red cross
confirming the NIC has been uninstalled as I've seen it do a few times
hours ago.

I've now restarted the computer for the Nth time. I'm uninstalling the
NIC from the Device Manager as the first thing after logon. It's
taking its time as usual. It's 2.45am and I better go to sleep. I'll
leave it to do its thing until the morning.

Right now I'm considering disabling the NIC from the BIOS and buying a
new NIC to plug in, or maybe one of those wireless USB sticks. If
anybody has any idea of what can be done short of reinstalling XP or
changing the motherboard it'd be very appreciated.

Manu

Have you tried resetting the modem? I am assuming you are using cable
to connect to the internet. Had almost identical problems you have a
few days ago. After trying everything including installing a new NIC we
changed the cable modem and everything worked. Replacing the original
modem still worked. Found out afterwards there was a reset button on
the modem. Your's may need to be unplugged to reset.

 

[Emanuele D'Arrigo]

Have you tried resetting the modem?  I am assuming you are using cable

to connect to the internet.  Had almost identical problems you have a
few days ago.  After trying everything including installing a new NIC we
changed the cable modem and everything worked.  Replacing the original
modem still worked.  Found out afterwards there was a reset button on
the modem.  Your's may need to be unplugged to reset.

Michael, thank you for your suggestion. Yes, indeed I have tried to
reset the cable modem turning its power on/off (there is no reset
button on mine). I'm pretty sure the cable modem is not the problem as
I'm connected to the internet through it. The modem is connected to a
router and two wireless laptops, including the one I'm typing from,
are currently able to get out on the internet through it.

The problem seems to be on the only computer that is wired to the
router. After an entire night the Device Manager was still attempting
to uninstall the NIC, as I left it about 7 hrs ago. I think I'll
disable the NIC from the bios and I'll attempt to cannibalize a NIC
from another PC I'm not using. If that works at least I'll know the
problem was on the NIC.

Again, thank you.

Manu

 

[smlunatick]

Michael, thank you for your suggestion. Yes, indeed I have tried to
reset the cable modem turning its power on/off (there is no reset
button on mine). I'm pretty sure the cable modem is not the problem as
I'm connected to the internet through it. The modem is connected to a
router and two wireless laptops, including the one I'm typing from,
are currently able to get out on the internet through it.

The problem seems to be on the only computer that is wired to the
router. After an entire night the Device Manager was still attempting
to uninstall the NIC, as I left it about 7 hrs ago. I think I'll
disable the NIC from the bios and I'll attempt to cannibalize a NIC
from another PC I'm not using. If that works at least I'll know the
problem was on the NIC.

Again, thank you.

Manu

Another suggestion is to test the NIC by assigning a valid IP address
on your network. This would by-pass the DHCP and should give you a
better "feeling" to see if the NIC is blown.

 

[Emanuele D'Arrigo]

Another suggestion is to test the NIC by assigning a valid IP address

on your network.  This would by-pass the DHCP and should give you a
better "feeling" to see if the NIC is blown.

You mean assigning a static IP address? I did try that but to no
avail.

I've eventually disabled the onboard card and cannibalized the NIC
from another computer that I'm not using anymore. I'm now back online
and wondering if really the onboard card is fried or if simply I
couldn't configure it properly.

In the process I've found a lot of little things that are probably
related and compounding or hiding the problem. I.e. the Event Log
report a DCOM problem. Attempting to open the MSHOME workgroup results
in an error. And a long-standing problem is the fact that when I Right-
Mouse-Click on a Network Connection icon the Network Connections
window freezes and gets nowhere. I've checked specific help pages on
the internet for each of these issues but the remedies proposed do not
seem to solve any of these problems. I guess either there's a yet to
be discovered common cause or I'm not doing things in the proper
order.

Oh well. The important thing that I'm back online. I don't need much
in-house connectivity anyway. It'd be nice to have but I can survive
without.

Thank you to both of you for chipping at the problem, your effort is
appreciated.

Regards,

Manu

 

[Jack \(MVP-Networking\).]

Hi
In general you should know that the onboard nforce NICs have a life time
shorter than PCI NICs (and on some motherboards very short).
IP 169.254.xxx.xxx is the default IP that is assigned when Windows can not
assigned an IP by a DHCP server.
In any case try this process, http://www.ezlan.net/debug.html
Jack (MS, MVP-Networking)