funky NIC problem

[koldchillah]

okay, let me start from the beginning..

I moved a PC from one location in the building to another where we had just finished installing & wiring some new cubicles.. When I plugged in the network cable and tried logging on the domain it said domain not available. First thing, I checked the cabling. Everything traced back into the server room and the switch was lighting up just as it was supposed to. I replaced the cables anyways, and also moved it to a different port on the switch in the server room. Still no go.

Then I tested the outlet by hooking up another PC to it and it worked fine. I hooked the problem PC back up and logged in as local admin. ipconfig /release tells me the adapter's IP had already been released. I then tried a renew and it paused for a long while and then gave me a DHCP error saying it can't locate a DHCP server. hmm.. okay.. so I set it up statically and reserved an IP on the server. Still nothing.. Can't even ping anything other than itself. THEN, I unplugged the NIC and noticed the TX light stays lit.. hmmm... thats strange.. must have been a bad NIC.. so I disable the onboard intel NIC in BIOS and put in a 3COM NIC. After installing the 3COM I had the EXACT same problems. I then tried the 3COM on EVERY PCI slot in the PC still with no luck.
Next I took it a step further and reinstalled TCP/IP and rebuilt the winsock using the recovery console.. STILL NO LUCK!! at this point I'm getting a little fustrated.. IRQ's in BIOS are totally different than those given in windows, but there are no conflicts detected in windows.

At this point I decide to remove the 3COM NIC and reformat and clean re-install windows2k.. I come back after working on some other things, finish the install and STILL NIC not functioning!! All I did was pick the stupid PC up and move it to a new area and reconnect it.. It was working fine! ?? ??:confused: Could someone please suggest something else I can try? I hate to call compaq and issue an RMA over some stupid NIC issue..

the PC is a Compaq Evo D310v which we downgraded from XP home to windows2k. TIA!

[YeOldeStonecat]

Take the Evo and test it by loggin in at a known good location...like in the server room, or your service room. Log in several times, rebooting, totally powering off and on, etc. Now you KNOW the computer is fine. (Do this with both the onboard NIC, and the 3COM..square away that RMA call)

Now you can question the "new location"'s wiring. Yes another computer logged in fine...once.

Dave's World was building some 310's today....I'm not crazy about them, but for their price...not bad I guess. I really like the 510 SFF models....those are incredible.

[koldchillah]

thanks YOSC... I knew you'd come through with some words of wisdom.. I'm about to leave work so its a little late for me to go over there and try that out right now, but we did test the outlet with another PC as well as a laptop and both seemed to be working fine so it was tested more than ONCE, but you may still be right.. I did suspect the wiring for a bit as I wasn't the one who did that particular set of cubes. (sometimes if ya want it done right ya gotta do it yo'self) I took a look inside the jack and it appeared to be terminated fine, but while I was running cable I noticed some of the cables were getting kinks in them and other parts were rubbing the sheath down quite a bit from getting stuck on things, etc. etc.. so I was already expecting some wiring issues, but so far everything has been running smooth, except this one PC.. I'm off tomorrow (Wednesdays I take care of my on-site clients), but thursday if one of my co-workers hasn't already taken action, I'll give it a shot, or leave them a note on your suggestion.

As far as these evo's go.. we do have a few 510's not many.. maybe like 3 or so. We've had no problems with them. A majority of the compaq evo's we have are: d300s (what I'm typing on right now), d300v, and d310v Most of them perform up to par and the company got a great deal on them and its nice when we get 40 of them in and downgrade to 2k & clone 'em w/ Ghost via TCP/IP.. makes deploment so easy. I can have a whole call center usually deployed in a matter of hours w/ ghost.

We do get a failing Maxtor or Fujitsu drive in them every now and then though.. I noticed you mentioned something about a bad Maxtor in an evo in another thread.. I've only seen a few w/ seagate drives and almost none w/ WD that I can think of.. but the Maxtors & fujitsus are trash..

thanks again for the tip.. :)

[YeOldeStonecat]

Originally posted by koldchillah
As far as these evo's go.. we do have a few 510's not many.. maybe like 3 or so. We've had no problems with them. A majority of the compaq evo's we have are: d300s (what I'm typing on right now), d300v, and d310v

That's good to hear....I have to do a big upgrade for a client soon...they need to replace their network, but yet still on a budget. Our sales manager quoted a lot of 310's for the general users to keep the costs down, the 510's for the power users...good to hear the 310's are working well. I've seen a few of them, just seemed so..."lightweight and super budget...cheap-like"...compared to the 510's which are so rock solid and have a good quality feel to them.

[koldchillah]

Originally posted by YeOldeStonecat
That's good to hear....I have to do a big upgrade for a client soon...they need to replace their network, but yet still on a budget. Our sales manager quoted a lot of 310's for the general users to keep the costs down, the 510's for the power users...good to hear the 310's are working well. I've seen a few of them, just seemed so..."lightweight and super budget...cheap-like"...compared to the 510's which are so rock solid and have a good quality feel to them.

yeah, the 310's are very cheap lookin'.. when we started ordering them I was thinking "oh boy, what are we getting into here." but on the contrary, out of the 70 - 80 d300v & d310v's hard drive failure seems to be the most likely issue and that is usually after a few months of use. Only other thing we've seen go wrong with them is 1 of them had bad onboard sound and maybe 2 or 3 PSU's have taken a dump on us, oh and 1 CD-ROM drive was bad right out of the box a while back. Other than that we've had no problems with them.

[koldchillah]

You were right.. It was the wiring. I went back over there this morning and ran a new cable through the bottom of the cubes and wired up the outlet and problem was solved.. Luckily I had ran a couple extra data drops otherwise I would have been over there all day just for one PC.. Still strange how the outlet works half the time, must be a short or break in the copper wiring somewhere.. thanks again StoneCat..:)

[YeOldeStonecat]

Originally posted by koldchillah
It was the wiring. Still strange how the outlet works half the time, must be a short or break in the copper wiring somewhere..

Yeah they can be a bugger to prove wrong...the wiring. But if you ever get sporadic connections....even once in a blue moon...go right for the wiring first. If a workstation is having a problem with the connection...try it elsewhere first on a "known good connection"....save yourself several hours reformatting the machine. Sometimes connections can be "flakey enough" to work for one computer, but not another...depending on the NIC and the OS.

I'm not going to go into your wiring skills, I'm not doubting them, but you've now experienced several lost hours and some headaches on this. This is why I never wire...I always use a guy who does nothing but this...and has some seriously expensive equipment to test all his jobs when done...he really tests the cables very thoroughly. These aren't simple link light testers...he has some nice Fluke equipment that can tell you everything about the cable it's connected to...very thorough and detailed test.

[koldchillah]

Originally posted by YeOldeStonecat
I'm not going to go into your wiring skills, I'm not doubting them, but you've now experienced several lost hours and some headaches on this. This is why I never wire...I always use a guy who does nothing but this...and has some seriously expensive equipment to test all his jobs when done...he really tests the cables very thoroughly. These aren't simple link light testers...he has some nice Fluke equipment that can tell you everything about the cable it's connected to...very thorough and detailed test.

Your absolutely right, but unfortunately getting our company to cough up expenses for a "real" wiring company has been beyond pulling teeth.. We often are put in a position where changes are being made so spur of the moment around here, and budget allocations are way below par so that we have to take on tasks that we ordinarily wouldn't be doing & sometimes without the "proper" tools.. (we recently went off on a little rant to our boss about how they expect us to flawlessly wire all of the time if we don't have a fluke inline testing device or physical & link layer testing equivalent.)

Regardless of the budget shortcomings, the experience has been just amazing. I really had no idea what I was getting into last year when I came to this place. I was hired as a PC tech just to support the computer hardware, but this past year I've been promoted a couple times and now spend my time doing network administration & support, premise wiring, admin/support/wiring for 3 different PBX phone systems, AV setup & repair, network logistics, deployment & asset tracking, etc. etc. etc.. Basically anything they didn't want to outsource or hire a new guy for we did.
The guys runnin' this place don't outsource unless all other options have been exhausted, even though it has cost us some extra manhours a few times; they still rationalize its cheaper to have us onsite tech guys stretch our skills a bit. Its caused for a steep learning curve on a few instances but the network is over twice the size and is running ten times smoother than it was the day I got here, mainly due to the fact that the former tech dept was really lazy, versus the current 4 of us who love getting our hands dirty in networking. Theres just an immense amount of knowledge that comes w/ the experience and we are addicted to it and that works out very well for the company. We have proven ourselves to all those who have doubted us and the executives have been grateful we have been able to pull off several large company changes and move arounds with barely any reasonable advanced notice or budget allocation.