Frequent Network Drops

[Hemmy]

Hi;

I support a LAN with approx 25 WinXP Pro SP2 clients and 2 Windows 2003 SP2
servers. The servers are connected via GB and all workstations via 100Mbps.
I have 2 Dell OptiPlex 745 XPPro SP2 machines that experience network drops
quite frequently, sometimes up to 4 times/hour. They lose their connection
to a mapped drive and are unable to ping either server when this happens.
The connection is usually restored within about 30 seconds.

I've tried different nics, updating nic drivers, swapping patch cables,
changing ports on the switch, even changing the 48+2 port switch without
success so far. Could this be a cabling issue between these two machines?
Any good network diag tools I could run on these machines to track down this
issue?

Thanks
Hemmy

 

[John Wunderlich]

I support a LAN with approx 25 WinXP Pro SP2 clients and 2 Windows
2003 SP2 servers. The servers are connected via GB and all
workstations via 100Mbps. I have 2 Dell OptiPlex 745 XPPro SP2
machines that experience network drops quite frequently, sometimes
up to 4 times/hour. They lose their connection to a mapped drive
and are unable to ping either server when this happens. The
connection is usually restored within about 30 seconds.

I've tried different nics, updating nic drivers, swapping patch
cables, changing ports on the switch, even changing the 48+2 port
switch without success so far. Could this be a cabling issue
between these two machines? Any good network diag tools I could
run on these machines to track down this issue?

My guess is that another computer on the network jumps in with a fixed
IP address that just happens to be same as an existing computer --
knocking it off the network. Make sure that every computer on the
subnet is set up with DHCP and any fixed-IP computers do not have
addresses in the assignment range of your DHCP server.

HTH,
John

 

[Anteaus]

Sounds very much like:

http://mylogon.net/support/psave

The other thing is to try using a fixed connection-speed instead of
auto-negotiation.