Bad Realtek ethernet controller on new GA-EP45-UD3P mobo?

[donfm]

I just built my new system and I may have issues with the Realtek Lan controller on my new Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P mobo.

When I logon intitially it seems it takes forever to connect to my DSL modem. After windows is loaded and everything else is up and running it takes another minute or so for the controller to connect to the internet. Once it connects it seems to work fine. I contacted Gigabyte and they told me to try and exterior ethernet pci card. Well I don't have one to try.

Is this normal for an ethernet controller to take so long? My other computers don't take that long but I never had a realtek controller before. It just seems like forever for it to connect.

I can't decide whether to RMA this back to Newegg or not.

 

[vailr]

Onboard NIC's often have intermittent connection failures, at least in my experience.
Did you disable (in bios setup) the one unused NIC?
Try updating to latest (Feb. 2009) Realtek driver.
http://www.station-drivers.com/page/realtek.htm
Otherwise, try as they suggested:
Rosewill RC-402 10/100Mbps PCI LAN Card - $6.99 + shipping:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16833166004
or:
Rosewill RC-411 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI-Express Network Adapter - $14.99 + shipping:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16833166019

 

[donfm]

Originally posted by: vailr
Onboard NIC's often have intermittent connection failures, at least in my experience.
Did you disable (in bios setup) the unused NIC?
Try updating to latest (Feb. 2009) Realtek driver.
http://www.station-drivers.com/page/realtek.htm
Otherwise, try as they suggested:
Rosewill RC-402 10/100Mbps PCI LAN Card - $6.99 + shipping:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16833166004
Rosewill RC-411 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI-Express Network Adapter - $14.99 + shipping:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16833166019

The first thing I tried was to update the drivers from the Realtek website. I have the latest drivers. It didn't help. Thank you for your help however.

Ok I just dowloaded the Realtek Diagnostic utility for NICS. It gives me a repeated error of
"unable to read or write to eeprom"

Is this normal behaviour. I don't know if this means the controller is bad or not.