Second NIC in Optiplex 960 doesnt work

For starters, I think both NICs have to be able to support "teaming".  Each NIC will need a separate IP address.  Not sure about your reasons for two NICs, but maybe a  broadband router might serve the purpose ?

If you google: XP team multiple NIC  you'll find lots of discussions and "solutions" for this issue such as post #4 by  ReggieB here.

Ron

Guess i wasn't clear enough.  I don't want to team the NICs.  This machine is in an industrial environment where 2 PCs interface to a PLC that controls a piece of operating equipment.  The PC that i'm struggling with has 2 network cards on different networks.  1 is a private network with the other PC.  we don't want to put that on our LAN because of the huge volume of traffic that these 2 generate between them.  The other NIC talks to the PLC to control the equipment.

I have several situations of dual NICs, both for teaming and bridging between different networks.  I am doing this using Opti 745, and 755.  The problem that i'm having here is that on the Opti 960, only 1 of the NICs at a time is physically working.  the other one can't be pinged.  If i disable the working NIC, then the other one auto-magically wakes up and starts functioning.

I have tested with several different NICs, PCI and PCI-express.  Then, as a test, we uninstalled XP from this machine and installed Vista.  Voila, both NICs work.  So it looks like a problem with the main board drivers or the on-board NIC driver for XP?

Sounds like XP couldn't/didn't assign resources for the 2nd NIC correctly and both were competing for the same interrupts on the bus.

At least you got it sorted by installing Vista. First time I've heard somebody say something good about Vista. :emotion-4:

Ron

Actually, i can't use Vista there, it's not supported by the app I need to run.  I only installed it to prove it was a problem with the PC, and not with my configuration.  So I'm still cant use the 960.

It's not so much a "good" for Vista, as a "bad" for the Opti 960.

Can you set Vista to use XP Compatibility mode for that app? Most, but not all, apps designed for XP will run properly in Vista's XP Compatibility mode.

Right-click the icon or short-cut for the app and select Properties. Click Compatibility tab and set it appropriately. If the app won't install under Vista, you can copy the entire installation CD to a folder on the hard drive. Then set Vista's Compatibility Mode for the app's installer to XP and that should allow it to install. After the app is installed, set Compatibility mode to XP mode for the main app.

You might also be able to install XP in a "Virtual Machine" environment under Vista which might be another alternative. Microsoft's VM is a free download.

Ron