Booting Win2000/Linux with replacement NIC

[cparker]

I had a netgear fa310tx go bad on my win2000/linux7.1 machine. Running diag from dos I found that the NIC passed everything but the network connection test. Also, when plugged into a hub the lights wouldn't go on in the hub. Win2000 device manager said all was ok with the nic, although it wouldn't connect to the lan. So I opened the box and plugged in a new fa310tx. Win 2000 wouldn't boot. It would hang, I suppose at the point it was looking for the nic. I then opened the box again, plugged in the old defective nic, booted up, and then deleted the device from the system. Then replaced the nic with the good one, then it booted up on win 2000 without a problem. Question is, suppose the new nic went bad completely and the system wouldn't boot at all. What should I do? Use the emergency console manager or ???? to delete that driver. What I'm doing now is to make a disk image of the system with and without a nic just in case it goes bad.

With linux, with the bad nic, the systme just hung when it was looking for the ethernet device. I assume that I'll have a problem with the new nic just like I did with win 2000, although not as much of a problem since the linux system hasn't really been used since installation and I could just reinstall it.

I guess I'm so used to win95/98 that it's a bit of a surprise to me that plug and play didn't work as I thought it would.

 

[Heisenberg]

2k hanging is a little strange although I've had problems with it not booting (BSOD) after hardware changes. If you can get to the boot menu you could try safe mode.

In linux, it will eventually timeout looking for the NIC and continue to boot. It may take a few minutes, so be patient. Once it continues to boot, it should detect the hardware change and allow you to remove the old NIC and install the new one. Even if it doesn't and just boots all the way up, you can manually change it using something like linuxconf.

 

[cparker]

Thanks! I got it working fine now. Using safe mode I can dump the nic driver, then reboot and all is well with the new nic card reinstalling itself. Not quite plug and play, but close.