MSI KT6VLSR Problem ** SOLVED **

[Rogue 2]

Yesterday I fired up my system as I normally do. Nothing wrong the night before. Boots up as normal, then when I log in, it asks me if I want to activate Windows since my hardware has "significantly changed". Turns out, my on-board LAN adapter has completely disappeared from the system - as if it was never there. Can't reinstall it, because nothing can find it.
So, I install a spare PCI 10/100 card and now everything works fine, except now the system won't shut off when I "shutdown" windows, it just reboots. Before I installed the "new" 10/100 card, it would shutdown fine (no reboots).
Never had this problem before. Any ideas how/if I can fix this? Or should I suck it up and just get a new motherboard? (If so - any recommendations for a good Socket-A MB?)..

Many thanks!

 

[Uncle Bob]

XP is probably 'blue screening' when you click shutdown and the default behaviour of XP is to reboot in those circumstances.

goto system properties/startup and recovery and disable 'automatically reboot', then see what the BSOD message is. My guess, it will be the old lan drivers.

 

[jackschmittusa]

Did you disable the onboard nic in the bios?

 

[Rogue 2]

1) Did what you recommended - turned off auto reboot, but there's no BSOD, no errors... just turns off for a split second and turns back on, as if someone's just waiting there and hits the power button as soon as it turns off.

2) Crazy thing is, I can't find a place to disable the onboard NIC in the BIOS. I swear I'm not an idiot, it's just not there. Perhaps this is half the problem?

No sign of the old LAN drivers either. It was a Realtek, if memory serves me correctly. The PCI card I'm using is a VIA. It's probably several years old, I forget exactly when I acquired it, but it seems to be doing the job OK.. after all, I'm here posting a message..

 

[Uncle Bob]

well.. I'm not always right

onboard devices are normally all enabled/disabled on the same BIOS screen, is there an onboard sound device and can you find that in the BIOS?

sounds like a new board is needed (but then again, I could be wrong..............)

 

[Rogue 2]

Yeah, I can turn on/off the onboard IDE, SATA, sound, etc... under the "Integrated Peripherals" part of the BIOS... but no network. Weird, yes. Frustrating when I can turn it on/off on my wife's $29 PC Chips motherboard, but not mine...

 

[Rogue 2]

SOLVED!!!

I re-flashed the BIOS with the latest version... now it's OK. Tried it after I found out the BIOS is a "plug-and-play" type of BIOS, it only allows you to enable/disable features it finds on the motherboard... so for some reason, the old BIOS decided not to "find" the on-board network adapter. The newest BIOS finds it just fine.

Thanks for all the ideas folks!