Inspiron 8100 and intel 8255x ethernet adapter problems

terence101,

Thank you for using the Dell Community Forum.

Test the hardware again.  If you remove the router from the equation, does the nic work?  What happens if you update the firmware and drivers on all devices? 

You have run into the Actiontec driver problem - it doesn't auto negotiate correctly with all hardware so what you are experiencing happens.  The driver I have linked below in my sig area for the 8255x ethernet has solved it for all who have tried it.

Hi, thanks for the info

But er, could u tell me which driver to download and also briefly tell me how to upload the driver into my laptop cos i tried it yesterday but it did not worked. Thanks again.

Actiontec Mini-PCI 8255x Ethernet driver is the one.  I believe they go to the device manager network adapter entry and choose Update and point it to the new driver.  I use the 3Com combo so I haven't done that.

Hi,
I tried upadating the driver for my network adapter but it replied that there was no need for an update at all. Anyway, i read other messags having this same problem and i tried 2 things that they did. Firstly, i checked my BIOS to see whether the LAN is activated, everything was fine there. Secondly, i tried to change the link speed and duplex under the network adapter properties, i changed it to 10Mbps/full duplex and everything seems to be fine. I am now able to connect to the internet but at a lower speed. I am now just wondering, could it be the faulty hardware as what several other people have been experiencing or is it something else?
Any other suggestions or enlightment you could shed over this matter wold be greatly appreciated. Thanks a lot for your help so far.

At first we all thought it was faulty hardware, but with cards having the problem having it solved with the driver I link, it has to point to a poorly written driver problem.  I wish I could help more with getting the driver loaded but I neither use XP nor the Actiotnec.  Try looking in the Add/Remove Software section and see if there s any reference to the Ethernet adatpter there and remove it.  Then delete the adapter entry in the Device Manager, reboot, and point to the new driver.  That may do it.

Hi,

After attempting for quite some time to fix the driver problem and the network adapter, i have finally given up trying. I m unable to get the point to the driver at all when reinstalling the network adapter bcos the windows does it automatically all the time.
Anyway, i have a new problem.
i borrowed a fren's network adapter to be used thru the pcmcia card slot, as the original network adapter got worse as it does not even work at all, ie not even detecting the router. The new network card is the Linksys PCMPC200 and it was installed with no hiccups and with the correct driver. It also detect the connection from the router as can be seen from the LED lights. However, i m unable to access to the internet cos everytime i opened IE, it says the page cannot be displayed. I have tried it with other web pages bu to no avail. I even ping the ip address and there was no lost packets. Everything else seems to be fine except that i cannot get a webpage. According to some technical support, they said that there is nothing wrong with any hardware but put the fault to a program in my computer that stops me from accessing to the internet. The thing is i do not know wut kind of programs that could be stopping my computer from accessing the internet or wether such a thing exists. Nobody would give me examples exactly which kind of programs could be doing this.
I however think that the problem lies in the ip address. As i have several laptops around the house, i checked their ip address and all of them have the correct ip address. Mine however, is different from the rest. I tried fixing the ip address to their ip address but had the same problem as well. The automatic ip address detected is always the same as before but different from the rest. Is there a way to renew the ip address bcos i tried using the repair button in the network connections but the message came out as unable to renew ip address.
Anybody with possible solutions, pls help
Thank you

Terence101 has continued this discussion in this thread.

Jim

Hi, everybody,

I am using windows XP professional and it's ok for months already. I got a pretty strange problem recently for network connection. When I restart my inspiron 8100 in the morning in my office (LAN link), I lost my network connection even though I didn't change anything last night before I shut it down. After several times I found the problem is from intel 8255x-based PCI ethernet adapter (10/100). When the time I had network, the Local Area Connection was using is adapter #2, while it was just intel 8255x-based PCI ethernet adapter when no network. Seems like the laptop choose between them itself. But I have only one adapter, and I can only see one each time in Hardware Device Manager. To resolve this problem, I have to uninstall the adapter and restart the computer and it will reinstall the adapter itself. But it will take several times to be lucky that the laptop can get adapter #2 back again. So I don't know what's wrong with my laptop. Shall I update the driver? But the driver works fine even during no network.......