On-board LAN fix

[pspada]

My 8RDA+ has been losing it's LAN connection, as you may have seen in various posts. Worse, I see the same thing happen at a client site, with a completely different chipset/mobo. In my case (pun intended) I thought overheating was the problem, but it appeared to happen consistently after a certain period of time at the client site - and I know that heat is not an issue there.

The only point of similiarity between both machines? I loaded Windows XP Service Pack 1 on both. So it's possible that it is enabling or otherwise beaking another setting. And where is this magic setting? In Device Manager, under Network Adapters. Select your adapter, then Properties, and then the Power Management tab. I turned off the "Allow the computer to turn off thsi device to save power" option, and have not had a problem with the LAN connection since. I'm going to try this at the client site later today.

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: pspada
My 8RDA+ has been losing it's LAN connection, as you may have seen in various posts. Worse, I see the same thing happen at a client site, with a completely different chipset/mobo. In my case (pun intended) I thought overheating was the problem, but it appeared to happen consistently after a certain period of time at the client site - and I know that heat is not an issue there.

The only point of similiarity between both machines? I loaded Windows XP Service Pack 1 on both. So it's possible that it is enabling or otherwise beaking another setting. And where is this magic setting? In Device Manager, under Network Adapters. Select your adapter, then Properties, and then the Power Management tab. I turned off the "Allow the computer to turn off thsi device to save power" option, and have not had a problem with the LAN connection since. I'm going to try this at the client site later today.

Cool.

Even though this is fairly common knowledge.

Did you set your Optimize For to cpu or throughput? I set mine to throughput.

 

[pspada]

By default it's set to Optimize for CPU, and I've left that alone. But I wonder, if this is fairly common knowledge, how come no one mentioned it when I talked about my on-board LAN dropping connections in numerous posts?

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: pspada
By default it's set to Optimize for CPU, and I've left that alone. But I wonder, if this is fairly common knowledge, how come no one mentioned it when I talked about my on-board LAN dropping connections in numerous posts?

I would have, but I didn't see it.

You would be surprised just how much info is out there. Its not all on AnandTech, you know.

I have found that power management causes a lot of strange things to happen.

I found throughput setting to be better when I play games (UT) online.

 

[pspada]

The strange part is that it worked perfectly fine before loading SP1. But since I'd changed m/bs at much the same time (and thus had to load SP1 for USB2 support), I did not realize at first that this could be the cause of the problem.

I'll try changing to throughput before I play UT2003 again. Be nice to get a boost in framerate or something, but since I already have about 3Mbps downstream anyway, I'm not sure I'll see a siginificant difference. I'll let you know.

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: pspada
The strange part is that it worked perfectly fine before loading SP1. But since I'd changed m/bs at much the same time (and thus had to load SP1 for USB2 support), I did not realize at first that this could be the cause of the problem.

I'll try changing to throughput before I play UT2003 again. Be nice to get a boost in framerate or something, but since I already have about 3Mbps downstream anyway, I'm not sure I'll see a siginificant difference. I'll let you know.

I used to have 3mbps, too. Rogers cut us down to 1.5 mbps.

 

[phpdog]

Hey ,

I had major problems with my LAN on my 8RDA+ until i did this simple fix

I had updated my BIOS and my LAN had died so i was trying to fix it for about 5 days without joy.

I read this article and it was fixed within seconds :-

If your onboard LAN isn't working, I may have a fix for you. Go to the command prompt and type "ipconfig /all".

Check to see see what the phsical address is IF IT IS NOT 000661 go into your bios.

When in the BIOS page go to "Integrated Peripherals" section in the bios. Enable "Machine MAC(NV) Address" and Input a mac address. The address you will input is 000661 then save and exit.

Check to see if this has fixed the problem.

It worked fine for me.

bye