Big problem with my Chaintech VNF4/Ultra

[rwmj5]

EDIT- IF you are having this problem, try unplugging the power cord from the back of your computer for 5 minutes and just turn your computer back on and see if it works.


I just got a VNF4/Ultra with all of the wonderful Nforce 4 gigabit ethernet features and whatnot, and right in the middle of reading some doom 3 tweaks page and downloading a demo of Far Cry, my internet connection stopped working, and shortly after that I got a local network cable unplugged message. I have my cable modem connected directly to the motherboard's ethernet jack. I made sure the cable wasnt unplugged, and there is nothing wrong with my cable modem because it connects fine to my router. I uninstalled the Nvidia LAN device, restarted and reinstalled it and nothing changed. The weird thing is that the connection listed under the network connections page in windows flashes and goes back and forth between plugged and unplugged (An X and then no X on the icon). I even tried a different cable and same result. On the back of my cable modem if it is connected to the jack on my motherboard, both the activity and 100mbps indicator lights flash together at about a 1 second interval. Does anyone know whats going on here? Is this just a driver/software issue or could there somehow be damage to the jack on my motherboard, or the connection of the motherboard to the jack that occured when the computer wasnt moved in any way? I would like to get this onboard lan feature working, however I have a feeling all of this Nvidia activearmor/built in firewall stuff may be too complicated for its own good on the Nforce 4's first round of drivers. By the way Im connected to the internet now from a 3Com lan card I scavenged from another computer.

 

[joelslaw]

if it happened suddenly like that, and then goes off and on I doubt it is a software problem of any kind. Try holding the connector side of the jack, tight agianst the side of the port, may be just a bad connection. (doubtful) More likely your port may have just gone out I don't know of any way to test a lan port (anyone?) You'll probably have to end up (here it comes) rma-ing the thing.

 

[mechBgon]

My guess: your nVidia firewall isn't letting your onboard NIC renew its DHCP lease. Try allowing ports 67 and 68 through. Or disable/uninstall the nVidia firewall if you prefer.

(naturally you should have firewalling of some kind, such as a combo of the router's firewall and the WinXP Firewall perhaps)

 

[rwmj5]

When I uninstall the network device from windows, It automatically uninstalled the firewall and all of that other stuff so I don't think the firewall is just blocking it or anything. There is a light on the back of the motherboard's jack when I plug in the cable, but it isnt doing the normal fast blinking youd get with activity. Does anyone know what the simultaneous blinking of the 100mbps and network activity lights on my cable modem might mean? It almost seems as if it's some kind of diagnostic and I thought maybe it was a standard thing common to all network devices that would tell you for example that the device it was connected to was messed up or something. I am starting to think that something just crapped out on the motherboard.

 

[Jayczar]

you could try disabling the onboard and tossing in a pci NIC if you have one or get one foe $5-10
to test and see if you get the same results and narrow down what is causing the problem.

 

[rwmj5]

I did. Everything from the computer on downstream is fine. The more I keep playing around with this, the more I keep getting the feeling that its a connector on the motherboard that is broken.

 

[Andres3605]

RMA it or get a new NIC, 2 simple solutions

 

[rwmj5]

Less simple due to the fact that NewEgg is sold out of them and might be for a while. While I am running fine on my extra NIC right now, it would be nice to have the gigabit ethernet offered by the motherboard, especially since it could get me a little less cpu hit while I am running the firewall, which is a feature that has been played up quite a bit by Nvidia with respect to their NForce4 chipset

 

[joelslaw]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
My guess: your nVidia firewall isn't letting your onboard NIC renew its DHCP lease.

If this were the case, wouldn't it have prevented him from pulling an IP in the first place. He mentioned above that he was already using the internet when the connection crapped out.

 

[stelleg151]

Wow, I am having same problem. All I see is orange light blinking around once a second, was only surfing the internet when it happened.... I think its about time to contact chaintech...

Edit: If I look carefully, it actually looks like the connection comes blinks on then off, around once a second. That is judged by the Local Area Connection unplugged sign going away for a tiny fraction of a second every second.

 

[bap4201]

i believe the epox 939 board also had many problems w/ ethernet

 

[stelleg151]

bump if anyone has any ideas

 

[Generalissimo]

Turn off your computer and unplug anything connected to power. Leave it off and unplugged for 5 minutes. Plug everything back in and see if your network connection is still on the fritz.

 

[rwmj5]

Originally posted by: stelleg151
Wow, I am having same problem. All I see is orange light blinking around once a second, was only surfing the internet when it happened.... I think its about time to contact chaintech...

I'm really hoping it's somthing that can be resolved with just a Bios update or new driver from Nvidia

 

[mechBgon]

Try this: determine what IP scheme your router uses (probably 192.168.1.xx subnet 255.255.255.0) and manually set your NIC's IP address and subnet mask to something that jives, such as 192.168.1.105 subnet 255.255.255.0.

Problem resolved? If so, then your firewall is simply doing its job ruthlessly I have my own nF3 250Gb board home and I may experiment with that a little, except I just got it all set up for Internet Connection Sharing. I guess someone has to do it...

 

[stelleg151]

I didnt install the firewall.

 

[penelopeb]

hard set your ethernet card to 100/full instead of auto sense. see what happens then...

 

[rwmj5]

Installed Windows XP x-64 edition with the 64 bt Nvidia beta drivers, It recognized the LAN port and everything installed fine, but when I plugged in the ethernet jack, the same exact behavior happened again. So its not a firewall/driver/windows settings issue, its obviously a hardware problem or something that could only be fixed in the BIOS.

 

[Freez]

Looks to be a hardware problem indeed. RMA it.

 

[Generalissimo]

I have the same board you do and solved it by leaving my computer off for a few minutes with everything unplugged. I know that sounds strange but maybe it's just an electrical problem. Before that, I'd tried reinstalling my network drivers and uninstalling the nVidia firewall, which didn't do anything even after rebooting a couple times.

There are people who have had this problem before this board came out, and there are people who have the same board who do not have this problem. I don't think it's completely a problem with the board, it might be a combination of different things. I haven't had the problem since fixing it the first day.

 

[rwmj5]

will do. ill see how it goes

 

[rwmj5]

as Peter Griffin would say- HOLY CRAP!! It worked!! Thank you Generalissimo. I have to admit I kind of blew your suggestion off, but it certainly did the trick. Everyone who's having this problem- just unplug the power cord from the back of your computer for five minutes and turn it back on. Unplug it don't just turn the power off. I hope I won't have to do this too often . Thanks again. Stelleg try it out and see if it works.

 

[Samus]

I had a simular problem with the same board.

Damn us for jumping on these new boards that dont have the kinks worked out yet.

I have yet to solve a related problem...Gigabit ethernet performance. I have gigabit all around, and just benchmarking file transfers on the chaintech board take 10 times longer than on my other systems that all have DLINK PCI cards in them.

Gigabit performance from the Chaintech is 19MB/s, whereas my other systems with PCI cards get anywhere from 33 to 40MB/s

What the hell is up with that! This NIC's suppose to be on the PCIe Bus!!!

 

[Trente]

I was considering this board; now i'm unsure...

rwmj5 - are you still experiencing these issues?

Any updates yet?

10x

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Samus
I had a simular problem with the same board.

Damn us for jumping on these new boards that dont have the kinks worked out yet.

I have yet to solve a related problem...Gigabit ethernet performance. I have gigabit all around, and just benchmarking file transfers on the chaintech board take 10 times longer than on my other systems that all have DLINK PCI cards in them.

Gigabit performance from the Chaintech is 19MB/s, whereas my other systems with PCI cards get anywhere from 33 to 40MB/s

What the hell is up with that! This NIC's suppose to be on the PCIe Bus!!!

Um, I believe the NIC is on the Hypertransport bus Try setting your NIC for Autonegotiate for 1000MBit FD and optomize for throughput. If your stuff all supports Jumbo Frames (including your router or switch as the case may be), enable that too. That's what gets the sweet performance on mine, but then again, we've got a ~$850 switch at work.