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3 Posts
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10271
April 6th, 2008 08:00
Being told my network cable is unplugged - but its not
I have a Dimension 4700, Wndows XP Home Edition SP2, 1GB memory circa September 2005. It is cabled to a Linksys WAG54G all-in-one modem/router.
The Dimension came with a builtin Intel PRO/100 VE Network Connection. Recently it has begun constantly dropping ("A network cable is unplugged") and reacquiring. By this I mean every 10 or 15 seconds.
I have tried the machines self diagnostic tools, jiggling the cable in the PC's plug, jiggling the cable in the router port, trying a different router port, trying a different cable also in different ports.
Today I went and bought another Ethernet card (Realtek RTL8139 Family PCI Fast Ethernex NIC) and installed it. At first I thought that had fixed the problem, but I am still getting the "A network cable is unplugged" message, but only every few minutes now.
Is there a common cause for this, and if so how can I fix it. Its very annoying and interrupts surfing, downloading and file sharing.
Thanks, Andrew
sentinel-master
345 Posts
0
April 6th, 2008 12:00
The first thing I would do is check the firmware/software of your WAG54G. Check that the s/w is current as it could be a known bug with Linksys. If there is a more recent s/w image available for your WAG54G, download from Linksys web site and apply it.
Then if the problem still persists try different speed settings - hard coded , rather than auto-negotiated
Try until you find one setting that stays stable - set both the WAG54G and yor NIC card the same each time :
(1) 100M Full Duplex
(2) 100M Half Duplex
(3) 10M Full Duplex
(4) 10M Half Duplex
cwallen19803
306 Posts
0
April 6th, 2008 12:00
take your ethernet cable out from your computer out of the router and plug it into the modem and see what happens.
if you can connect then you have a problem with the router or it's configuration. if not, then you have a problem with the cable or the ethernet card in your computer.
i wouldn't spend money on anything until i isolated the problem.
rouppe
3 Posts
0
April 7th, 2008 08:00
And actually, just as I pressed 'post' on that last entry I had another thought.
I noticed in my modem settings that it says that the DSL Modulation mode is ADSL2+. This is the new ADSL that Telecom are rolling out so maybe that was recently upgraded which caused the incompatibility with my old firmware in the router.
rouppe
3 Posts
0
April 7th, 2008 08:00
Well, seem to have fixed it. I downloaded the latest firmware. However I had the devil of trouble installing it because the network card kept dropping (!!) so the upgrade would fail.
So then I tried changing the network speed to 10Mbs Full Duplex (I'd tried 100MB yesterday with no success) and boom, everything seemed to sort itself out.
So then I completed the firmware upgrade, and it all still seemed stable. So then I've changed the network speed back to 100Mbs Full Duplex and it still seems stable.
I'll keep an eye on it, and if that looks OK then I might try swapping back to the builtin network card to see if that still works.
Thanks, Andrew