Weirdest cpu problem EVER

bobdole369

Diamond Member
Dec 15, 2004
4,504
2
0
Cliffs:

1. network went down.
2. Unplugging a PC that was turned off fixed it
3. WTF?
4. ????
5. Profit?

I'm the IT admin for a small office of about 15 folks. Last Thursday after I went home for the day the boss called reporting the whole network - (internetz, servers, phones (voip)), everything was dead. Switches looked OK, and I walked him through pinging the servers - troubleshooting revealed a problem in one particular switch, and eventually to my own computer, which was off. Unplugging it brought the network back up nearly instantly.


Last night it happened again. THis time instead of throwing hardware at it I instructed my boss to simply unplug my computer. It instantly fixed the problem. It seemed like no packets were making it through the switches. Even pings from server to server were not making it (and those were not even on the same switch where the problem appeared.)

Obviously I'm replacing the NIC, but WTF???

NIC is a Marvel 88E8056 drivers from 12/2007.

What in blazes? I am using the same PC this morning after plugging it back in and all is well. My IP is a DHCP assigned reserved one,

We use gigabit switches, a variety, but the backbone is on 3 SMC gigabit "smart" switches. We don't use any of the layer 3 stuff yet - it was planned to vlan off the phones, but that isn't done yet. My PC was on an unmanages Netgear 24 port gigabit - which goes to a port on one of the SMC's. All the servers are on ports from the SMC's, as well the 2 lines going to 2 routers, (one cisco - used for outside services) - one Netgear SSL VPN router that the internet goes through.

Have 4 win2k3 servers - one running DHCP and AD/DNS/WINS, another serving files, another serving MS SQL database and a number of apps, and the fourth helps with DNS/WINS that we formerly used as a MS PPTP VPN. It's no longer that way and only serves as backup DNS. I don't think any of this is related to the problem.
 

ScottMac

Moderator<br>Networking<br>Elite member
Mar 19, 2001
5,471
2
0
It sounds like a power problem, possibly a serious power problem. Have whoever does your power stuff check those circuits (PCs, Switch, anything else connected to any of those systems).

seriously.

Good Luck
 

imagoon

Diamond Member
Feb 19, 2003
5,199
0
0
Most computers leave the NIC powered on standby power when the computer is off. Even if "WOL" is off on the BIOS, the chip will often still have power and if it is damaged, may spew garbage even while appearing to be off.