Giga-Byte nforce 2 networking (and a few other) issues.

[TheInternal]

Hey all,

I'm working on a system I slapped together around an old AMD Barton 3000+ with a Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro (nforce 2 based) motherboard and have been trying to tackle problems in some sort of sequence of importance.

I've solved the CPU not being detected properly (a little switch by the north-bridge for the FSB speed).

I may have solved my random blue screening (ran the RAM through over 30 passes and it tested good) by doing a minor over volt (fingers crossed!), but I'm still having issues with the on-board network adapter.

Every time I start up windows XP MCE 2005 (fully updated/patched/SP3), my network adapter can't connect to the internet. I've tried reinstalling a few times (and now have it showing that it's the #3 adapter despite it being the only adapter. Is there some kind of ghosting issue I need to resolve / can't access?), but that didn't fix it. Now, to make the internets work, I have to disable then re-enable the adapter after I boot up. A command prompt release / renew doesn't cut it.

After I solve the networking issue, it's figuring out how to cold boot the machine and have it recognize my Maxtor Maxline III 300 GB SATA drive without having to hot plug it >.< (it reboots fine, just requires the hot plugging on cold boot like it did on an old MSI board until a BIOS fix was released).

 

[Tanclearas]

Discrete NIC is your friend when it comes to ethernet on nforce 2 through nforce 4. I'd say the same is true for nForce SATA controllers, but generally they only become a headache once you have Windows up and running and decide to use nvidia's SATA driver over the default Windows driver.

 

[TheInternal]

I'd agree for the most part, especially on the SATA drivers (which I learned years ago), which I chose not to use in this install.

However, the network adapter still should work and I would greatly appreciate feedback on windows XP not liking it until I disable/re-enable it and why Windows says it's my third (of one) network adapters.

I'm guessing this is a quirk that someone has encountered before, but from searching for about half an hour, I wasn't able to find my exact problem with the NIC.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

I have the same board, at least the non Pro version. Only advice I can offer is consider a discrete nic, the on board nics of the NForce 2-4 can be weird sometimes. Mine didn't have the SATA controller, but as a general rule don't use the NVidia drives, just stick with the Windows ones for the storage on NForce boards.

 

[sandorski]

I vaguely recall some serious flaw with NForce LAN. IIRC it was a certain feature that never worked correctly. I believe that was dropped by Nvidia though, so that's likely not the problem.

 

[Cerb]

+1 on a the NIC. Get something cheap with a 8139 on it.

I gave up my first NF2 board, because of networking problems, a few months before they were widely known...it lived happily for a few years as a Linux-based file server, and then got re-purposed for something else, and I'm sure is still ticking away. Apparently, whatever it is was either specifically a Windows driver thing, or something that the Forcedeth guys could get around. Either way, just add a NIC and move on. Aside from the NIC, they were pretty good chipsets.

 

[StrangerGuy]

I vaguely recall some serious flaw with NForce LAN. IIRC it was a certain feature that never worked correctly. I believe that was dropped by Nvidia though, so that's likely not the problem.

That was activearmor firewall on NF4, not NF2; NF2 ethernet is plain old no-gimmick ethernet. NF2 is pretty much perfect except the Nvidia's native IDE drivers. It was the best socket 462, AMD, and the entire NV chipset line by miles.

 

[nenforcer]

I've used both an MSI K7N420-D (nForce1) and a Leadtek nForce 2 and finally ASUS A7N8X-E (in my sig) and never had any problems with the ethernet using the last 5.1 nForce drivers from nVidia.

There were definite problems with the early IDE drivers / hardware and the ActiveArmor hardware firewall for ethernet. So much so that ActiveArmor was completely dropped after nForce 4.

The nForce 2 chipset does not natively support SATA drives so your problems may lie in the 3rd party SATA controller to get that large hard drive to work.

I don't know about that Gigabyte board but most motherboards from that era used SiliconImage SATA controller.

 

[Iron Woode]

I've used both an MSI K7N420-D (nForce1) and a Leadtek nForce 2 and finally ASUS A7N8X-E (in my sig) and never had any problems with the ethernet using the last 5.1 nForce drivers from nVidia.

There were definite problems with the early IDE drivers / hardware and the ActiveArmor hardware firewall for ethernet. So much so that ActiveArmor was completely dropped after nForce 4.

The nForce 2 chipset does not natively support SATA drives so your problems may lie in the 3rd party SATA controller to get that large hard drive to work.

I don't know about that Gigabyte board but most motherboards from that era used SiliconImage SATA controller.

My now deceased 8RDA+ had a great built-in nic.

I now have a used Aopen AK79D 400max board and the nic is dead. The board has 2 SATA 150 ports all controlled by a Promise controller. I haven't used it but I assume it works.