Windows 8: ndis.sys Interrupts

[Earwax]

I upgraded to windows 8 about a week ago. I have gotten just about everything to work except for my network. This system doubles as an HTPC and utorrent seedbox, and it runs without issue when I turn utorrent off. However, with utorrent running or any seemingly intensive network download/upload, the network connection cuts out after 5-30 minutes and the system lags to a crawl while server interrupts dominate 50% or more of the CPU usage.

I have run latencymon scans, which do seem to indicate that utorrent and ndis.sys/tcpip.sys are the culprits. That data can be found here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3428343/Drivers.txt
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3428343/Processes.txt
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3428343/report.txt

I am at my wits' end dealing with this issue. Previously I had no troubles in win 7, this move to win 8 has been a nightmare. Any advice on how to fix this issue is much appreciated. Things I've already tried: mobo bios flash, updated and rolled back drivers, different versions of utorrent, different settings, countless network configurations...

System Specs: ASUS P5G41T-M, Celeron E3400, 4GB Crucial DDR 1066 RAM, XFX Radeon HD 4850 1GB Vid Card, 1TB WD Black SATA, 3TB Seagate Barracuda, utorrent 3.2.3

 

[piasabird]

Maybe the NIC is bad.

Did you install the chipset drivers? Try downloading them for Win 8. I am just guessing here but it is highly possible the motherboard is incompatible with Win 8 or you may need a new BIOS to make it work.

 

[Earwax]

Have installed both the manufacturer's drivers from win7 and win8 and have tried multiple versions of win 8's drivers (rolled back and still no good). I flashed to the latest BIOS just this past week. I feel this is a software problem because it's only when network activity is high that the issue occurs.

It just made it through the night last night uploading at close to 1mbps without any crashes, but if I try to download anything, it'll peak out at around 4mbps and then crash after anywhere between 5 and 30 minutes. Typical use, without any large downloads, and the system runs completely fine.

I may try purchasing a cheap PCIe network card as an alternative fix, but I'd like to make sure I try everything with my system settings first.

 

[Earwax]

After additional testing, I suppose it's worth noting that this issue occurs on downloads only.

 

[Earwax]

To anyone else with this issue, I solved the problem by downloading the windows 7 x64 drivers from this site: http://www.atheros.cz/

I did a manual driver install from the x64 inf file, and for the last 24 hours, I have had no issues. It's been a long road, and I'm using win 7 drivers in win 8, but everything works now.