My Net Nightmare AKA Internet Connectivity Issues Catch-All

Malor wrote:

OK, so we can be pretty sure at this point that the problem is in one of three places: the adapter or driver on your machine, the cable, or the switch port you're plugged into. (this is assuming you're wife's machine is plugged into the same switch, and that same switch goes to the router. If that's not accurate, then we might need to work a little more.)

Do you have another cable you can try? If you can use another cable, and plug into a different port on the switch, then if you get another dropout, it has to be something about the computer's interface... at that point, we'll be almost 100% certain that it's a problem with the machine, and then we can start trying to figure out if it's software or hardware.

I have switched my wife's internet cable with my cable and have gotten the same negative effect on my machine. There's been no change in drop-out behavior with an exchange of cables. The cable remained in the same port on the router when I made the switch so I don't think it's the router.

OK, I think we can be pretty sure it's the local computer.

Are you in DHCP mode right now, or are you using addresses you manually assigned? Because your numbers are 70 and 75, I'm thinking you've already turned DHCP off, and typed those numbers in yourself, on each local computer.

Is that accurate?

edit: a quick way you can answer that question: do an ipconfig /all (which prints a lot more than the standard ipconfig). Up at the top of a ton of stuff that should print out should be your main Ethernet adapter...it should say something like Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection, and then give you a name: mine says "Intel(R) 82574L Gigabit Network Connection". Two lines under that should be "DHCP Enabled", and then should have a Yes or a No.

"DHCP Enabled" is what the fourth line says from results from my machine.
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/BOzKxf2.png?1)

These are the results from my wife's machine.
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/0pg6Kox.png)

Malor wrote:

OK, so, the next thing to try is to see if somehow you're losing your DHCP lease. The way to do that is to set your IP address manually.

Skip the first part of this set of instructions (where you write stuff down, because I'll be giving you what you need), and go down to Step 5:

http://portforward.com/networking/st...

In Step 9, these are the numbers to put in:

IP address: 192.168.1.75
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Default gateway: 192.168.1.254

Preferred DNS: 192.168.1.254
Alternate DNS: 75.153.176.1

Basically: that's exactly copying your current setup, except it's setting your address locally, instead of using a network service to get it.

If you still have problems after that, then we're down to two remaining things: a driver problem, or a physical port failure.

Done. And now we wait. Should I continue running the ping tests?

OK, so, the next thing to try is to see if somehow you're losing your DHCP lease. The way to do that is to set your IP address manually.

Skip the first part of this set of instructions (where you write stuff down, because I'll be giving you what you need), and go down to Step 5:

http://portforward.com/networking/st...

In Step 9, these are the numbers to put in:

IP address: 192.168.1.75
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0
Default gateway: 192.168.1.254

Preferred DNS: 192.168.1.254
Alternate DNS: 75.153.176.1

Basically: that's exactly copying your current setup, except it's setting your address locally, instead of using a network service to get it.

If you still have problems after that, then we're down to two remaining things: a driver problem, or a physical port failure.

edit: or, after thinking about it, malware of some kind, but since you just did a reinstall, that's much less likely than normal.

My network on my home machine kicked out at 6:47 p.m. west coast time. It went back up on its own two minutes later.

OK, so it's not DHCP. It's gotta be local, there's nothing else left. We know it's your computer, now we need to figure out if it's a hardware or software failure.

Next time you see it fail, pop into Event Log:

http://maximumpcguides.com/windows-7...

and look to see if there's anything visibly failing in the System part of the event log. That might tell us what the error actually is. Errors will have red highlights, and are the things you should check first; yellows are Warnings, and might be interesting, and gray events probably aren't interesting unless they're right after a yellow or a red. (which might be the computer indicating recovery from the problem it just complained about.)

If you spot something that sounds interesting, check to see if you can see the same events recorded around 6:47 last night.

At around 6:47 p.m. last night I got this hiccup.
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/V89V65R.png)

This is the system log entry immediately following the hiccup.
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/FAf2yjn.png)

And early Friday morning I had this error at 12:44 a.m.
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/LVibKXn.png)

This is the system log entry immediately following this error.
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/xgcc0kf.png)

Ok, neither of those are really hardware-related. The first is telling you that a DNS lookup failed, which is a symptom of the network failure, rather than a cause. The second message is, um... well, on any given network, one Windows machine will end up being in charge of maintaining the 'browse list', which is how you get a list of computers in Network Neighborhood -- your computer asks the 'browse master' for a list. Which computer maintains the list is determined through an 'election', where the various machines figure out who's "best qualified" -- there's a bunch of internal detail that doesn't matter.

That message is telling you that Shannon-PC thought it was the master browser (which it might have become when your network stopped), and that the network is redoing the election. It's probably another symptom of the failure.

Do you see anything about the Ethernet device failing, or anything about, I dunno, excessive errors or something?

Oh, another point of interest: what do you get from a "netstat -e"?

Malor wrote:

Oh, another point of interest: what do you get from a "netstat -e"?

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/gLXk3W3.png)

Hmm, no errors there. I don't think Discards are that big a deal, though I could be wrong about that.

You know, I'm wondering if somehow you ended up with the wrong driver. Do you remember what your model of motherboard is?

I found a bunch of errors/criticals that happened on Monday.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/WZQOe5g.png)

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/6YAmD2e.png)

Malor's barking up the right tree with the driver, methinks. A BIOS or firmware update might be called for too.

LouZiffer wrote:

Malor's barking up the right tree with the driver, methinks. A BIOS or firmware update might be called for too.

I've recently reinstalled Win 7 and updated every conceivable driver for the motherboard. Chipset, lan, audio, utilities, etc. All updated with the latest of the latest.

Oh, I just remembered. I was vacuuming the rug near my computer. Both walls of the computer were off but the nozzle never touched the case itself and was pointed down. Think I did something bad with static electricity maybe? I never pointed or stuck the nozzle towards or into the case itself.

EDIT: I knew better to do this but I was tired and went, F*** it. Just vacuum the rug and get it done.

I thought that driver crash might be it, but when I looked up the SGH-I747M, all I find is references to a Samsung smartphone. Do you have a Galaxy S3 plugged into a USB port? If so, that's probably (though not certainly) a different problem.

What I'd suggest doing, at this point, is reinstalling the driver and the "Ethernet Utility". On that page you linked me, go to support, and then the Win7 64-bit section of the drivers (that is what you have, right?) and then grab both the top two things in the "LAN" section. Install the driver first, and then the utility.

It looks like the drivers are different based on your OS, and one possible confusion might be having installed a Windows 8 or 8.1 driver on your Win7 machine. ASUS provides an "AsusSetup" program that will normally figure that out for you. I'd try that again, on first the driver, and then the utility. If you're still getting crashes, try a manual install of the Win7 driver... it's the "Win7 for other" subdirectory after you've extracted the driver files. (The utility doesn't seem to have anything except an AsusSetup, so that'll either work or it won't.)

But don't do that until you're sure you'll still getting crashes after reinstalling both things.

I tried installing the driver first and this is what happened when I double-clicked on the Asus setup. Note, this is the topmost Asus setup executable. There is still an Asus setup exe in the Win 7 for other I haven't tried.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/jn8Ot7i.png)

OK. My main rig lost its connection again and clicking on the network map to engage the basic diagnostic repair tool is not working.

I'm looking at the Event Viewer at the system category in the windows logs section and it's only showing a DNS Client Event at the time of failure.

EDIT. Hmm. My net connection is back up.

Strangeblades wrote:

this is what happened when I double-clicked on the Asus setup.

Assuming the New folder you're in there is "C:\Users\SHANNON\Desktop\New folder" I'd create a subdirectory called WIN7 then copy the AsusSetup.ini into it -> try again.

edit: or just try the setup in the win7 for other folder

OK.

Got the latest ASUS lan driver repaired but the net connection still went down. So I removed the ASUS lan driver and reinstalled them. Net connection is holding steady so far.

The ASUS utility driver is also up and able to run.

Try going into that "Win7 for other" directory, and running AsusSetup from there.

Malor wrote:

Try going into that "Win7 for other" directory, and running AsusSetup from there.

Yup, as you can see.

OK, well, if both the driver and the tool are installed, let's see what happens.

Malor wrote:

OK, well, if both the driver and the tool are installed, let's see what happens.

So far so good.

Oh boy. I left to do a workout and run, I get back, power up my main rig and wow.

Now it's asking for me to plug in an ethernet cable into the back of my machine. Uh, it has an ethernet cable plugged into but I unplugged it and re-plugged it anyway. No dice.

I then took the other end and put it into another router port. Still nothing. And I already determined it wasn't the cable's problem as this is my wife's old cable I'm using and her computer's connection was rock solid with either cable.

In response I broke out a ouija board, a litre of goat's blood and my favourite kris dagger. Sigh. Again.

EDIT: I'm going back to this in the morning. Right now I am drinking beer and eating yogurt-covered pretzels and am loving life. And falling asleep.

OK, well, I think you may actually be losing the physical network port; you may need to buy an aftermarket network card to fix your machine.

I'd probably try one more thing: in the Programs and Features entry in Control Panel, I'd try to remove both the Realtek drivers and the Realtek client. (Note that you will probably also have some kind of Realtek sound drivers; you can remove those if you want, but you'll need to redownload and install them too, and that probably won't make any difference one way or the other.)

If you can find both those things to remove (they may not both be there), then I'd try one more time on installing both, doing the driver from the 'Win7 for other' subdirectory. If it gives you any more trouble after that, I'd probably just buy a new card, as they're not horribly expensive or anything.

This is a good one, from Intel... in my experience, these are much better than Realtek network cards.

Malor wrote:

OK, well, I think you may actually be losing the physical network port; you may need to buy an aftermarket network card to fix your machine.

I'd probably try one more thing: in the Programs and Features entry in Control Panel, I'd try to remove both the Realtek drivers and the Realtek client. (Note that you will probably also have some kind of Realtek sound drivers; you can remove those if you want, but you'll need to redownload and install them too, and that probably won't make any difference one way or the other.)

If you can find both those things to remove (they may not both be there), then I'd try one more time on installing both, doing the driver from the 'Win7 for other' subdirectory. If it gives you any more trouble after that, I'd probably just buy a new card, as they're not horribly expensive or anything.

This is a good one, from Intel... in my experience, these are much better than Realtek network cards.

Can I use this card instead of my motherboard? Right now that's where the ethernet plugs into. I can both the card and my existing ASUS H87 Plus motherboard existing side by side right?

Well, what you'd do is plug that card into one of the short PCIe slots on your motherboard; don't use the long ones, because those are faster; you want to save those for something good. There's a metal cover you remove from the back of the case, a thin one the same size as the back of the card; you then slide the card into that spot, and screw it down with the same screw that was holding in the cover.

When you next boot up the machine, Windows should recognize the card, and install a good driver automatically, as that's an older chipset. You can, if you wish, install the official Intel drivers, but that's not actually necessary. Then you move the network cable from the existing card over to the new one.

Oh, before doing that: remember how we set a static IP address on the existing card? Do that same set of steps in reverse, turning it back to DHCP mode. You don't want an address assigned to an inactive network port, it can sometimes do funny stuff.

From there, install the new card in a short slot, screw it down, power up, wait for Windows to recognize the connection, and the move the cable over. I believe you'll be live immediately.

You could spend more time working on the old port, but it seems very likely to me that something's wrong with it. If I was actually sitting at the machine, since you just did an OS install, I might try doing that again, and would then be super careful to install only the Win7 Other drivers from the download, on the theory that Realtek or ASUS munged up something serious in the driver package. But system rebuilds are no big hassle for me, because of how I have my network set up... it just takes me two or three hours to be back to normal.

You might not find that solution nearly as appealing, not least because it may not actually fix anything; you might do the reinstall, find out it actually is the physical network port going bad after all, and then have to buy the card anyway.