NIC card issues

[Tim Draper]

hey,
the other week i was doing some direct PC>PC connectivity via cat5 - no
switch involved. plug in cat5 to one pc, and the other end to pc2.
pc2's 2nd NIC card is now dead.
pc1's NIC card = fully working still.
i was gonna 'bridge' the connections after i sorted the wiring out.

pc2 - enable 2nd NIC in bios, boot windows and all is fine. plug in a
cat5 cable, and it lags out vista completely. if you reboot with the
cat5 in NIC2, then all is fine untill it boots into vista.
it seems to be driver issue. so i hop into device manager and remove the
NIC's drivers, restart and it installs drivers again. same issue - plug
cat5 in, and it lags windows out.

this morning i try a windows liveCD (ultimate boot cd - windows ver -
based on XPpro) and the NIC card works flawlessly. so it's obviously a
vista issue.

soo..... any ideas on a fix, short of reinstalling vista?

tim

 

[Dennis Pack]

Tim:
The problem may not be drivers. Going on memory a standard Cat5 cable
won't work PC to PC, you need a crossover Cat5 cable for it to work. Have a
great holiday.

 

[Saucy]

Usually one can get a cross-over cable from the local network supply store
... but they can be fashioned homemade style by moving the little wires
around. One can use a crossover cable for a single direct NIC to NIC
connection between two PCs.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays
Saucy

 

[Troy McClure]

you obviously need a crossover cable... are you using one?

 

[Tim Draper]

i dont wish to undermine you guys, but crossover cable is NOT the issue,
and if you think it is, then you needing ur head looking at

i've use straight through cable on both an Asus board, and now this DFI
board, both with sucess.
being both NF4 motherboards, they have the usual NF4 NIC and the same
marvell NIC chipset. the asus ran fine in both NF4 and marvell. this DFI
marvell has now screwed up.

i also forgot to add that the marvell port does not work with either
bridged, crossover, OR via straight through on a switch/hub. it's
completly dead to vista.
at bios/dos level it's fine. boot to a live cd it's fine, the dead NIC
port is soley related to my vista install alone.


and just so ya know - you can use a straight through cable, pc>pc using
BRIDGED connections. (at least in a windows environment and on the NF4
boards) i couldn't believe it 1st time i stumbled across that fact!

so yeah, back to original question.... how do i COMPLETELY remove
anything relating to network to fix this problem, without reinstalling
vista?

tim

 

[Saucy]

Install and use another NIC card.