Networking completely dead...

[Gerald Vogt]

I have a computer here that more and more gets into a state where
networking is completely dead. After a reboot, although the network
adapters are O.K. in the device manager and the network connections look
normal in the network connections panel (expect that they are not
connected) none of them seems to be active. The task manager for
instance reports "no active network found" in the Networking. When I try
to disable one of the network adapters in the device manager devmgmt
hangs and nevers ends. I cannot shut down the system fully, it will hang
somewhere saying "Windows is shutting down..."...

I have three network cards in the systems: one builtin ethernet, one
builting a/b/g wireless card and a pc-card linksys wlan adapter. None of
them is working after the reboot. None of them establishes a link nor
gets a proper connection with an IP address from the DHCP server.

To fix this situation I have to reboot the system in safe mode, remove
(uninstall) all network adapters in the device manager, then reboot and
let windows find the adapters automatically again during start up.
Windows finds all cards and installs them. After that, they all work
until the next reboot of the system after which they are all dead again.

I guess the problem must be somewhere with the networking services but I
could not pinpoint the exact cause, yet, nor found an appropriate way
to debug/log what is happening when it does not work.

Has anyone an idea how to fix this problem or how to find out what is
going on?

Thx, Gerald

 

[Chris]

I have a computer here that more and more gets into a state where
networking is completely dead. ....

I have three network cards in the systems: one builtin ethernet, one
builting a/b/g wireless card and a pc-card linksys wlan adapter. None of
them is working after the reboot. None of them establishes a link nor
gets a proper connection with an IP address from the DHCP server.

To fix this situation I have to reboot the system in safe mode, remove
(uninstall) all network adapters in the device manager, then reboot and
let windows find the adapters automatically again during start up.
Windows finds all cards and installs them. After that, they all work
until the next reboot of the system after which they are all dead again.

Have you tried rebooting without any nics installed at all?

You know you are having problems with the cards. It may be one card,
or it may be something in the operating system involving all the cards.
What I would do is uninstall the drivers through Safe Mode, then
physically remove all the cards, reboot the system, let it start up,
then add the cards one by one back to the machine, rebooting after each
installation, until you get problems again.

If you have problems after just one NIC, stop, uninstall that NIC
(physically and logically through safe mood), then try a different NIC.
If you have problems with any of the three NICs, then it's a problem
with the OS, rather than any specific drivers associated with the NIC.
You might get lucky and see that it's one of the three cards causing
the problems.

 

[Gerald Vogt]

Have you tried rebooting without any nics installed at all?

Thx Chris. I would do that if I could but it's impossible. It is a
laptop. The ethernet is onboard. The builtin a/b/g requires quite some
work to remove it. I have tried to disable the nics in the device
manager. But it does not help either.

I just wonder why there is no way to figure out where it hangs. I have
checked the boot log. But it's normal. The event viewer does not say
anything. I thought it should be mentioned somewhere that something is
not properly initializing during startup. But there is no indication of
a problem anywhere to find...

Thx, Gerald

 

[Guest]

I have exactly the same problem. It started this Tuesday (8/15) shortly
after your original post. My notebook is a ThinkPad T42p. In addition to
what you tried, I attempted to restore to an earlier checkpoint - but the
restore never succeeds. Did you get any further with this? If so, please
let me know. If not, perhaps we can compare notes and try to track down the
issue.

 

[Gerald Vogt]

I have exactly the same problem. It started this Tuesday (8/15) shortly
after your original post. My notebook is a ThinkPad T42p. In addition to
what you tried, I attempted to restore to an earlier checkpoint - but the
restore never succeeds. Did you get any further with this? If so, please
let me know. If not, perhaps we can compare notes and try to track down the
issue.

No. I could restore a earlier restore point and it worked for a while.
But two or three reboots later it stopped again. The restore did not
complete when I started it from normal booted Windows. I did the restore
from safe mode without networking. Just as I could only remove the not
working devices from device manager only in safe mode.

Currently, I try to avoid rebooting. I did it once during the last few
days and it is still working. I am on vacation and do not have much time
nor resources to track this down at the moment. I am just glad that it
is still working...

The notebook is a T40. I have a Intel PRO/100 VE ethernet and IBM
11a/b/g wireless and a Linksys WPC54G pc-card adapter. I had some issues
with the ethernet recently as it did not work properly with some cables
and some switches.

Gerald

 

[Guest]

Gerald,

I actually found my way through this issue. I was doing the same thing as
you - avoiding reboot - in order to keep my computer on the network.

I isolated the issue by booting with a network-bootable CD. From there, I
could access network resources. So I figured the problem must be
software-related.

I use a VPN client (AT&T Net Client) to connect to my company's intranet.
It turned out that client install was corrupted (it blue-screened whenever I
tried to use it or uninstall it). My understanding of that software is
fairly limited, but it seems that the VPN adds layers to all existing network
connections. So, when the VPN went bad, all network connections were shut
down.

I booted with safe mode (no network), uninstalled AT&T Net Client, rebooted,
and I'm back in business.