An ethernet port that connects... but doesnt connect?

[Akill]

Hi people. Extremely weird problem of mine here, i hope its just something silly ive overlooked. But its time to ask the pro's

ok, normally my box connect to my network via a wireless adapter, which works flawlessly (as flawless as wireless network adapters come). Well, the other day i had a small lan party at a friends house, i tried to connect my computer to various differant routers via its 1gbps nvidia nforce ethernet port. When its all setup the router dishes my adapter an IP address, and it will say its all working. However my computer will not be on the network, i cannot ping the router, other boxes. I will not appear in client list on game network browsers or use file sharing etc etc.

What could possibly be wrong here?

thx for input lads

[Agent]

Firewall ? (Zonealarm "OMG.I.GOT.PINGED BATTLEWOBBLES !!!" is a classic for this)
You defo got an IP, the gateway ect.. assigned to you by DHCP ?

edited - typo

[Akill]

considering i was only on a lan i made a point of getting everyone to have their firewalls turned off, yea mine was off and everything. Nothing was stopping it. the DHCP gave me an ip, a subnet mask and a gateway ip.

any clues? Im worried that the port might be busted but if its collecting an IP it cant be, it does recieve packets from the router, even if they arnt plentiful

[Agent]

What firewall is it though?, some do not do as they are told.
The issue I had with friends was almost the same as this. He had Zonealarm installed and "disabled". The only way we got it to work was by uninstalling it.
Of course, it might not be anything to do with it, but just food for thought.

If you got assigned everything that DHCP should have given you, I *really* think its going to be software related.
You could wack a spare PCI network card (or a USB one) in there to check it if you want though

An easier way to tell might be to grab a Linux "live" CD, boot from it, and try pinging / connecting to the net / ect.. That would nail it down pretty easily

[Akill]

its the basic windows firewall, my wireless connection works through it, on or off. The weird thing is only a fortnight ago i connected the ethernet adapter to my router with another computer to play red alert 2, Im not sure what i have done in that timespan to upset the adapters functionability.

the nvidia nforce ethernet controller has these options under advanced, i remember checking it out a few days ago when i was experimenting with wakeonlan, so i might of changed something. Anything suspicious here?

Checksum offload - enabled
flow control - enabled
IEEE802.1p support - disabled
jumbo frame payload size - 1500
low power state link speed - enabled
network address - not present
optimise for - CPU
segmentation offload - enabled
speed/duplex settings - full autonegotiation
VLAN id - 1
VLAN support - disabled
WakeOnLAN from poweroff - disabled

the driver version is 4.6.6.0 although i cant see the particular driver being at fault, considering its worked beforehand (i think :/ )

if i had a spare pci ethernet adapter i would give that a go. And i dont have a linux live cd nor do i think i have the time to try and download/burn one either

any other suggestions for identifying the problem?

[Curly]

only thing I can think of is try with Jumbo frames off, it's that possible.

Curly

[BigBry]

Have you checked the 'advanced' tab on the windows firewall setting, even though you've set the main screen to off the advanced tab often still has it turned on.

Have you set the power setting function for the network port to always on ie not using the power saving function ?

Have you tried the repair function on the network connection?

Are you sure you haven't changed the name of your network?

Does your computer connect to the internet and it's just the network connection to other PC's that's playing up?

[Akill]

yea ive completely turned off the firewall. Im 100% on that

i have the power saving turned off.

change the name of my network? please explain that bit to me :s

i connected the pc to the router for LAN functions, ive tried a couple of routers and my switch. I cannot ping or connect to the routers managment page, so i qwould assume net connection doesnt exsist either

i cant turn jumbo frames off but it says its at the standard 1500

[G4Z]

Yeah, make sure the workgroup name is the same for each of the windows boxes on the LAN.

Another simple test would be to fire up command prompt (start>run>cmd)

Type "ping 192.168.2.1" without "" and with routers IP.

If you get a response to that I would say its fine and probs just the workgroup thing, also try pinging other machines on the network.

If you cant connect to them by name, try by IP.

Hope that helps.

edit - ah just noticed you said you cant ping other boxes. Its probs not the workgroup thing...

[Akill]

ive screwed myself over now- the only thing i could think of to try was to install the latest nforce 4 drivers. So i uninstalled my nvidia nforce drivers, then installed the nforce 4 drivers, and the nvidia network access manager and activearmor. I restarted the pc and it showed in the device manager my ethernet adapter with a yellow circle with exclamation mark on it. I uninstalled it and ran the 'add hadware' wizard. When the wizard picked it up it said 'found new ethernet adapter' then something like 'added nvidia nforce ethernet controller' then the pc died on me. Every time i boot it up in normal mode i get a BSOD, the computer will only boot in safe mode WITHOUT networking.

what should i do now? :/ The add and remove programs wont let me uninstall the nvidia forceware network access manager because its in safe mode, i cant uninstall the ethernet adapter in the device manager because it says it may be needed to boot the computer, and disabling it makes no differance. I will probably just have to stick in another harddrive, copy all my data over and reformat if i cant solve the problem soon

[Curly]

Could try disabling nic in the bios, boot to windows(if poss) uninstall nvidia drivers, boot to safe mode and run Driver cleaner to get rid of any reminants of the nvidia drivers, re-enable nic in bios, then re-install the nvidia drivers, no guarantee it would work though.

Curly

[Akill]

na, nothing i can do will get me back into normal mode. ill steal a spare harddrive from someone, copy my essential files then reformat. Ill let u guys know what happens when i do it in the next day

[TheAnimus]

do a "route print"

you might find the adapter is working perfectly, its just that everything is trying to go via a different route.

if not that, check ARP (Address resolution protocol)

do an "arp -d *" (deletes all entries in hte arp table, don't worry it will find them again)

then try to ping the routers ip

then arp -a can you see the routers IP and a MAC address next to it?

[Akill]

Hey, some not so good news :/

I reformatted. Proceeded to install my chipset drivers etc etc. The system isnt picking up my ethernet adapter, i installed the ethernet controller but there is a yellow circle exclamation mark over the nvidia ethernet adapter under the network devices in the hardware device manager. The LAN adapter doe not appear under 'view connections' in my network places.

Then i remembered i had disabled the lan adapter under my bios lol. After enabling it, installing the correct drivers from the device manager page, and pinging my router i can say that its working properly

thanks for your help guys. Im not sure what was wrong with it in the first place but im happy knowing that i can kick some ass at my own lan party next time lol