Internet connectivity... upon booting, says "Internet cable is unplugged"

[Muse]

This fairly recent installation of WinXP 32bit was working OK. But last week or two, every time I boot it says An Internet cable is unplugged in a balloon off the taskbar.

I get messages to Run: %windir%\network diagnostic\xpnetdiag.exe

I run that and it says again An Internet cable is unplugged. I swapped out the ethernet cable from the machine (Lenovo T60) to my Asus router, but that hasn't changed anything.

Running %windir%\network diagnostic\xpnetdiag.exe a few times, connectivity is finally established. Why after several times (sometimes 2, other times close to 10 times) doing that the connection is finally restored I don't know. You'd think only once would be enough.

What can I do to fix this?

I could remove the ethernet cable and connect by wifi but that seems stupid because the machine is less than 6 feet from the router.

Edit: Even after connectivity is mysteriously restored, running Windows XP Network Diagnostics [%windir%\network diagnostic\xpnetdiag.exe] still reports that it can't connect and says to check this and that, consult the network administrator, etc. IOW, it doesn't realize that there is indeed an ethernet connection at that point.

 

[daveybrat]

Well since the PC is running Windows XP i'll assume that it's old. Might just be a dying NIC. Have a spare PCI NIC card you can install to see if that works?

 

[pooptastic]

Is this the on-board ethernet you're using?

Might be worth taking a peek for updated chipset or networking drivers for your motherboard.

If you forgot what motherboard you have, the free CPU-Z program can also tell you that.

Worth a try if you don't have extra hardware lying around.

 

[Ichinisan]

When the socket is electrically damaged (typically after a storm), you usually have problems sensing link. Usually it's all-or-nothing, but my mother's computer got zapped in such a way that the network jack sometimes seems to kinda work. It sometimes claims to be running at 10mbps instead of 100mbps, but it's still practically impossible to use even when it says "online."

Sounds like that one may be zapped in a way similar to my mother's.

 

[Muse]

Well since the PC is running Windows XP i'll assume that it's old. Might just be a dying NIC. Have a spare PCI NIC card you can install to see if that works?

I probably do have a PCI NIC lying around but there's no empty PCI slot.

 

[Muse]

Is this the on-board ethernet you're using?

Might be worth taking a peek for updated chipset or networking drivers for your motherboard.

If you forgot what motherboard you have, the free CPU-Z program can also tell you that.

Worth a try if you don't have extra hardware lying around.

I'm pretty sure I have the latest drivers installed. The mobo is a GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard.

Yes, it's onboard ethernet.

The last few times I've booted it I've found that if I wait some, I will have a connection. I am in the habit of putting my PCs to sleep instead of shutting them down. But with this machine, unfortunately, it has never successfully come out of S3 suspend. So, I always shut it down and boot from scratch. I figure I will continue to try to find a solution to that. I may just buy another mobo somewhere that will take the CPU and RAM from this one and have at least 3 PCI slots. As is, the system has these components:

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard
Q8200 (2.33Ghz 45nm Core2Quad), copper core stock heatsink/fan
PNY 9600 GSO dual DVI PCI-e GPU
2x2GB GSkill blue DDR2-667 RAM
EVGA SuperNOVA 550 G2 550W 80 Plus Gold Modular Power Supply
MIT MyHD-130 HDTV PCI + daughterboard
Hercules Game Theater XP (GTXP) PCI sound card + breakout box

 

[pcgeek11]

Everytime I have seen this problem it has been a damaged NIC.

 

[Puffnstuff]

Might be worth taking a peek for updated chipset or networking drivers for your motherboard.

This right here. I just went through massive networking issues including a horrible stutter while surfing and listening to music and intermittent packet loss. I installed the latest intel drivers, no change, rolled back to the previous drivers again no change. Then I went into device manager and took a look and caught the error message when looking at the more information tab on the drivers tab. This revealed that the drivers needed further installation.

Using the installer wouldn't fix the issue so I had to use the update drivers tab there but I only pointed it to the root folder holding the files and forced it to search the subfolders. When it found the drivers and installed them it did so correctly and now my adaptor works right.

 

[Muse]

Last night I copied a folder with 8.2GB of data from this machine via ethernet through my router to my NAS, everything wired. I was surprised that it took around 2 hours. The motherboard has gigabit ethernet. Shouldn't it have gone faster than that? I think that's almost as slow as my ~4.1mbps DSL. Is this further indication that the onboard NIC is failing?

 

[Muse]

I might have fixed this. I installed a 2nd OS partition today. It too said I had a network cable unplugged. I couldn't get a network or internet connection. I replaced the ethernet cable and the problem hasn't returned.

Can someone address the issue I explained in the my post before this one? I explained that it took 2 hours to copy an 8.2GB folder from this machine to my NAS. That just seems like way way too long. I mean the mobo has gigabit ethernet

Gigabyte EP45-UD3R mobo specs

 

[pcgeek11]

A lot of small files will take considerable more time to transfer than a few large files.

Which were you transferring? Lots of small files or a few large files?

 

[Puffnstuff]

I might have fixed this. I installed a 2nd OS partition today. It too said I had a network cable unplugged. I couldn't get a network or internet connection. I replaced the ethernet cable and the problem hasn't returned.

Can someone address the issue I explained in the my post before this one? I explained that it took 2 hours to copy an 8.2GB folder from this machine to my NAS. That just seems like way way too long. I mean the mobo has gigabit ethernet

Gigabyte EP45-UD3R mobo specs

Bad cables can make you pull your hair out as you attempt to locate the root cause of your issue. I hate when it turns out to be one that has just been laying around and not being moved around which would cause a reasonable person to immediately dismiss it as a possibility.

 

[Muse]

A lot of small files will take considerable more time to transfer than a few large files.

Which were you transferring? Lots of small files or a few large files?

Folder has 180 files of equal size, 48,128KB, totaling 8.26GB.

I think that now that I've switched out the ethernet cable, I'll copy it again and see if it goes faster.

 

[pcgeek11]

Bad cables can make you pull your hair out as you attempt to locate the root cause of your issue. I hate when it turns out to be one that has just been laying around and not being moved around which would cause a reasonable person to immediately dismiss it as a possibility.

I try and make this the first step with any network issue. Swap the cable.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

CAT 6 was supposed to meet the Gigabit standard, but in my experience CAT 5 has been totally satisfactory. But the occasional faulty cable has always been a bane. At least it is easy to swap them, and if you don't make up your own -- they're still cheap to buy in the lengths you need.