I love talking to myself...

A user on another board pointed me to this article:

So let me get this straight. I have to hard-set my "GIGABIT" NIC to 10mbps??? And run the file server on my state-of-the-art XPS @ 10mbps??? There has got to be another way. If not, I will BUY a DECENT NIC and DISABLE the onboard P0S NIC.

Someone please confirm...thanks

-kj-

Well there may be a happy ending to this after all, I had a very good call with the Dell XPS support team last night, I will post more details as soon as the situation is resolved ... hang tight!

Ok guys ... I've just gotta say ... Dell XPS "premium" tech support cam THROUGH for me on this deal.

I called and spoke with Rob (US based call center) and although the call got off to a rocky start ... one of his initial suggestions was an OS reinstall (riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight) ... eventually we got down to business. After a standard bit of troubleshooting he agreed with me that it was a hardware issue and there was no reason to run the XPS @ 10mbps (as the fix from Dell instructs). Ah, the voice of reason...

We then started talking about remedies ... he put me on hold and spoke with a manager ... then came back and said they would send me a new NIC. Awesome. I asked about it, he said it was a 10/100 card, and I said ... I'd really rather have a Gigabit card, since we were essentially "replacing" a Gigabit NIC on the mobo. Earlier, I had found the card I wanted ... a DLink DGE-530T ... and Dell had it in their store for $29.99. Told him that was the one, he put me on hold again, and got approval to send it out.

Three days later, I had the NIC, got it installed, and so far, so good. No more "A Network Cable has been Disconnected" messages ... and my Event Viewer log looks great.

Props to Rob and Dell's XPS support team. They came through in a big way for me!

Thanks to all in this BB also!

-kj-

I am glad Dell took care of you. Dell has been useless to me. Despite multiple calls to tech support none of them were bright enough to do anything. Even when I refered them to this forum info they were lost. I will probably just but the DLink DGE-530T if you still have had good luck with it. Thanks.

I am happy with it. It has cured the problem for sure. I have a Dimension XPS, and found the US-based support to be excellent. Good luck to you...

-kj-

hey i was havin the same trouble and i kept blamin sbc,so 2wire sent me out a new modem and i havent had the problem since,but i know what u r talking about it was drivin me nuts,  i have  xps gen2 3.4 ghz  with 120 g hd  and 2 gigs of dual ddr ram with 800 mhz f sb  with a ati 9800 xt pro ghrapics card just got it in april and then my op system seemed unstable so i reinstalled my op system  and so for the last 2 mo i havent had problem      terry aka scrog      scrogfill69@aol.com or scrogfill69@sbcglobal.net .....did all the same stuff checkin cables and every thing then goin to that tech support to be greeted by a pakistan who cant speek or even under stand,,,,,,when and if u ever call dell ask for a level 2 tech that is very in to the xps series and u can probably get better results...........................

Think I solved my problem. The message was actually my wireless router rebootong over and over again. It turns out the remote control for my dish network was causing the problem. When I disabled the wireless part of my router the problem went away. I ave since changed my wireless settings on my D-link router and so far so good. Suggest if anyone else has problem look at cordless phones and remote controls for electrical interfence and don't forget yours neighbors electronic device interference.

And occasionally it really means that the cable is "unplugged" -- I had the problem last weekend, and went through all the usual troubleshooting.  It turned out a critter had stripped 3 inches of the outer covering from the LAN cable in the crawlspace under my house, then stripped the insulation off all eight wires, and bitten two entirely in half.  After splicing, wrapping, and armoring the cable with some cable wrap, all is copacetic again.