Why does my network card start crapping out on me after installing linux?

[Alienwho]

Alright, I've got WinXP installed and went ahead and installed SUSE 10 with a dual boot, and right at the part where it does the internet connection test, it fails and my network card seems to simply stop working. I go ahead and boot back into windows and it just plain doesn't work anymore. This just boggles the mind because it makes no sense to me as to why this would happen. This also happened a few months ago while installing Ubuntu (which i completely forgot about until reinstalling linux just now). I thought it was an ubuntu problem so I also installed SUSE and had the same problem. The only solution is to completely reformat everything and install windows, but the second I try to install linux again the same thing will happen.

I have no idea how the linux boot can affect the network cards functionality in windows, but it does. My motherboard is a DFI lanparty UT ultra-D and I use the onboard NIC's, neither of which work after installing linux (neither in linux nor windows). I dual boot SUSE 10 and XP just fine on my laptop. When I originally had this problem last time I tried to dual boot a few months ago I thought my motherboard NIC's just suddenly crapped out on me, but as an act of desparation I simply reformatted everything and threw windows on my machine and they both worked perfectly, so I figured it was just a fluke and thought nothing more of it. I didn't have any more time to mess with it so I just left windows on it... until now.

Anybody have any ideas? I was excited about dual booting and primarily using SUSE this summer on my desktop

<edit> I should mention that the lights on the NIC are flakey after the problem arises, sometimes they'll be on, sometimes not, no real consistency as to why or why not.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

Hmm... is that even possible? I don't see how linux in one partition can affect windows in a seperate partition.

Ok let's start by going over the onboard nics in windows. First, is the hardware detected and the network connection setup in Network Connections? How exactly is it broken?

 

[Alienwho]

Yeah I have no idea how it's possible, but it happens every time. I've tried 5 times in the past 36 hours.

In windows, it is detected by the system. Also it seems to change the settings, it turns on a network bridge, tries to associate everything with the bridge. So i'll have to go through and try to disable the bridge and kind of 'reset' all the nic's by doing the "windows networking - connect to a LAN or home network) which then it will go through the whole wizard and freeze, not allowing me to do anything.

 

[bersl2]

It does sound like the hardware is subtly broken. The drivers in Linux likely exercise the hardware differently from XP.

This might be a stupid question to ask, but did you try cold booting? (You might even want to consider completely draining the board of main power, lest anything but NVRAM be preserved.)

 

[Bluestealth]

This reminds me of This Thread

 

[scottws]

I've had a similar problem.

I had XP, then created a dual boot with Ubuntu. I have a Motorola wireless card with a Linux-unfriendly Broadcom chipset. But I was armed with guides on how to get the windows driver working with ndiswrapper. So I took the PC downstairs to the router so I could hook it up via network cable and tried and tried to get the wireless card working in Ubuntu.

Eventually I gave up, and brought the PC back upstairs. Upon rebooting into XP, the normal wireless icon did not appear. Instead, the Found New Hardware wizard started, saying it found a new Ethernet controller. It was unable to find the drivers.

So I reinstalled the wireless drivers. I actually had a lot of trouble with this. It would ask me to reboot and I would. Upon getting back into windows it still couldn't find the drivers and there was a yellow question mark next to the device in Device Manager.

Eventually I got it working again. A few weeks later, I had a bunch of free time, so I thought I'd give Ubuntu a shot again. Failing to get it working again, I went back to Windows, where I experienced the same problem as before - the wireless card basically had to be reinstalled.

 

[Alienwho]

Ok guys so i'm glad i'm not the only one. Scottws it seems like you had the exact same problems that I had.

And thanks for the link bluestealth, same problem also.