My Net Nightmare AKA Internet Connectivity Issues Catch-All

Malor wrote:

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.

Thanks for all your help. Seriously, well done.

I'm don't think I'm going to do a reinstall as I just did one and reinstalled all the games I wanted to play. I think I'm just going to buy that network card. Eh, maybe I might do a reinstall, but I doubt it.

Malor wrote:

I just looked at the pictures of your motherboard, and it looks to have 4 PCIe slots; 2 short orange ones (called x1 slots) and one long orange one (called x16, because it can carry 16 times as much data.) There's also a brown PCIe slot that's physically the size of an x16, but actually has wires for x4, so it's better than the short orange slots, but not as good as the long one. Then there are three black slots that are old PCI style, which you don't want to use anymore; they're too slow.

You should have your video card in the long orange slot already, and the two short slots on either side are probably free. You'd probably want to plug the network card into the orange slot closest to the CPU, because that will avoid blocking the cooler for your video card, and it's exactly the right size for the card. (which is x1; that's all it needs.)

If that one's not available, I'd use the long brown slot, because that's far enough away not to block airflow. The short orange slot on the far side of the video card from the CPU will tend to restrict its air intake, so you'd only want to use that one if there were no other choice.

Thanks! And hey. It's Saturday! Take some time off!

I just looked at the pictures of your motherboard, and it looks to have 4 PCIe slots; 2 short orange ones (called x1 slots) and one long orange one (called x16, because it can carry 16 times as much data.) There's also a brown PCIe slot that's physically the size of an x16, but actually has wires for x4, so it's better than the short orange slots, but not as good as the long one. Then there are three black slots that are old PCI style, which you don't want to use anymore; they're too slow.

You should have your video card in the long orange slot already, and the two short slots on either side are probably free. You'd probably want to plug the network card into the orange slot closest to the CPU, because that will avoid blocking the cooler for your video card, and it's exactly the right size for the card. (which is x1; that's all it needs.)

If that one's not available, I'd use the long brown slot, because that's far enough away not to block airflow. The short orange slot on the far side of the video card from the CPU will tend to restrict its air intake, so you'd only want to use that one if there were no other choice.

edit: oh, one other thing: it's a good idea to physically turn the power off on the power supply while inserting a card. If you don't, the motherboard will have standby voltage running to it, which can do unpleasant stuff while you're plugging in an expansion card.

(I made a last-minute edit: make sure you read that last paragraph in the post above yours. )

Let me +1 Malor's solution. Intel's NICs are rock solid.

Malor wrote:

(I made a last-minute edit: make sure you read that last paragraph in the post above yours. )

Got it. Thanks again Malor! And *Legion*! And anyone else I will forget to mention.

I'm not entirely certain, but I think the one I linked has a better chipset, the 82576L. (which is pretty ubiquitous.) From what I can see, that one is the 82541PI, and between the lower number and the limited advertised feature set, I suspect it's not as good, and it actually costs a few bucks more.

edit: after digging a little further: NO, you don't want that card! That's old-style PCI. Yuck!

Malor wrote:

I'm not entirely certain, but I think the one I linked has a better chipset, the 82576L. (which is pretty ubiquitous.) From what I can see, that one is the 82541PI, and between the lower number and the limited advertised feature set, I suspect it's not as good, and it actually costs a few bucks more.

edit: after digging a little further: NO, you don't want that card! That's old-style PCI. Yuck!

I missed where you linked one. *shrug* a nic card is a nic card. You'd probably be fine with a $12 one from Walmart

*shrug* a nic card is a nic card.

You'll have to just imagine my horrified look.

Ooh, this could be fun.

ATM MACHINE!

Oh man am I imagining your horrified look, and it's amazing.

Malor wrote:
*shrug* a nic card is a nic card.

You'll have to just imagine my horrified look.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

$14.99.....5 star reviews at newegg. BAM!

Malor wrote:

I'm not entirely certain, but I think the one I linked has a better chipset, the 82576L. (which is pretty ubiquitous.) From what I can see, that one is the 82541PI, and between the lower number and the limited advertised feature set, I suspect it's not as good, and it actually costs a few bucks more.

edit: after digging a little further: NO, you don't want that card! That's old-style PCI. Yuck!

So, what you recommended to me is still cool? I can cancel the order if I have to.

Fwiw Strangeblades, the exact same thing happened to me about 4 or 5 years ago on my PC. I had the same solution, which was to throw in a seperate NIC.

Gumbie wrote:

*shrug* a nic card is a nic card.

Gumbie's NIC

Strangeblades wrote:

So, what you recommended to me is still cool? I can cancel the order if I have to.

The one I linked you is a very good card, one of the better ones on the market.

Phishposer wrote:

Ooh, this could be fun.

ATM MACHINE!

Oh man am I imagining your horrified look, and it's amazing.

It just occurred to me that I could probably increase your amusement level: I've never seen Tubgirl or 2 Girls, 1 Cup (though I have seen Goatse), so imagine away.

Installed my network card, the one Malor advised me about, and so far so good. Is there a test I can run all night? The one I ran before?

Yeah, the dual pings of your secondary PC and your router are good tests to leave running. Tomorrow, control-C them, and look to see what they tell you... ideally, you should see only one or two packets listed as Lost for each destination.

Quick question. What port do I stick my network card into? My ASUS H87 PLUS motherboard has a Network iControl port. It also has two ports made for the network card, one above and one below my video card. I inserted my card into the top port, above my video card.

Yeah, I talked about that upthread a ways -- it sounds like you used the one I thought was probably best. It would work fine in any port you could plug it into, so it's not that critical in any case.

IIRC, there should be three options: two short slots, and two long ones. You want to save the long ones for long cards, so it's down to one of the short ones... and the one on top blocks the cooling for the video card least. So you picked the one I suggested.

It looks like iControl is some kind of packet prioritization thing, so I presume by 'iControl port' you're meaning the Ethernet port on the back of the motherboard. The new card should have the same kind of port on the back, and you're going to be moving your Ethernet cable out of motherboard port, and plugging it into the card instead.

If there's something else called Network iControl, I have no idea what it is.

I know rare goes a day anyone has anything good to say about Comcast, but here in San Francisco (and I believe of number of other markets as well), they did a major upgrade for subscribers where the baseline speed is 50mpbs down (was 10). I actually subscribe to the Blast tier (previoulsy 50Mbps) and that got bumped to 105 Mbps. I've actually had a real good connection with comcast, so a speedtest actually cloocked in at 120Mbps on a wired connection through my router.

Whats unfortunate is that I have a kryptonite wall in my apartment and its not wired all the way so in my living room I have to rely on a powerline adapter hooked up to another wireless router, and there's a pretty big degradation, but at least I have bandwidth to spare if I have a lot of things going on.

I may even consider dropping back down to the 50mbps base plan if the signal connection is nowhere close in the living room.