OK, this is quite an interesting problem. I have a machine running Windows 2000 (SP4 + latest hotfixes) using a Netgear GA-302T gigE NIC. Every once in a while (30 minutes to 4 hours is a good range), it will simply drop ALL network connections. New connections will throw up Winsock errors. The network cable still shows as plugged in, but any outbound traffic never makes it onto the network, nor is incoming traffic recognized. I can, at that point, unplug the network cable, wait 10sec, and plug it back in, but after that, ANY pings (even to 127.0.0.1) will show as Destination Host Unreachable. The only solution is to reboot the machine.
The same hardware works fine booted into Linux, so I know it's a software problem. Never seen this before, even though I've run plenty of windows machines. Reinstalling Windows is, unfortunately, not an option. Replacing the network card is both not an option (I run software nodelocked to its MAC address) and pointless - it works perfectly under Linux.
It seems to depend somewhat on how much traffic I put through it and the CPU load. Large traffic loads (BitTorrent) or large CPU loads during network traffic (3d rendering while surfing the net) will kill it more readily than just letting it sit at a desktop all day, though it will invariably fail after some time at that, too.
The same hardware works fine booted into Linux, so I know it's a software problem. Never seen this before, even though I've run plenty of windows machines. Reinstalling Windows is, unfortunately, not an option. Replacing the network card is both not an option (I run software nodelocked to its MAC address) and pointless - it works perfectly under Linux.
It seems to depend somewhat on how much traffic I put through it and the CPU load. Large traffic loads (BitTorrent) or large CPU loads during network traffic (3d rendering while surfing the net) will kill it more readily than just letting it sit at a desktop all day, though it will invariably fail after some time at that, too.
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