"A Network Cable is Unplugged"

[tmiha71]

Re: "A Network Cable is Unplugged"

Yep!
Gave a cold boot and the ethernet came right back up. Something must of really locked up the chipset.

And if it repeats (network error), after reboot, maybe capacitors should be inspected, post your mobo model, and PSU too...

[momaka]

Re: "A Network Cable is Unplugged"

I don't mean to hijack this thread, but I'd like to add that I have what appears to be an extremely similar problem. Except in my case, the router restarts *most* of the time when I get that "A Network Cable is Unplugged" message. Even more weird is the fact that sometimes the message pops up before my router restarts, and sometimes the router doesn't restart at all but I still get the message. And if that's not enough, I have also tried 2 completely different routers with 2 completely different power supplies, multiple computers connected with different ethernet cables, and I know both routers work without problem back in my parents house. So what gives? I don't know. All I know is that I am in an area with lots of military bases around, and cell-phone coverage also tends to go off every now and then for a second or two (but it doesn't coincide with the router going out). But that doesn't happen as often as my internet going out.

So I don't know what the hell is going with my stuff either, but I just wanted to throw this out here in case it turns out to be the same problem. And oh yeah - sometimes the router will restart by itself without any of my computers being on. I wonder if this could be some kind of external bot attack.

BTW, I don't know how our internet is handled since I am in a dorm complex and all we really get is just a Cat5e jack from the wall. But in any case, whatever is connected on the other side of the ethernet cable, I don't think it should be able to make my router restart.

Again, I'm not trying to solve my problem here since this is pentium's thread, but just wanted to state my observations as this could potentially be the same problem.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: "A Network Cable is Unplugged"

Sorry, that's incorrect! That would be only 1.28 MB/s at the most!

My bad, sorry.

[pentium]

Re: "A Network Cable is Unplugged"

Yep!
Gave a cold boot and the ethernet came right back up. Something must of really locked up the chipset.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: "A Network Cable is Unplugged"

10Mbps isn't all that bad, that's 3MB/sec, and that's plenty enough for all web surfing.

Sorry, that's incorrect! That would be only 1.28 MB/s at the most!

And because of other technical issues of the obsoleted standard, you may see it as low as 1.2 MB/s at max.

[pentium]

Re: "A Network Cable is Unplugged"

Typing from a laptop...

Connection dropped out and isn't coming back. Computer also vanished off the switch so the NIC isn't talking.

....yet from the back of the PC you can clearly see it's green CONNECTED light lit and the amber BUSY blinking away in no fancy order. Continues to do so with the cable unplugged.

It's done this once before. On the old board. Now I'm positive this isn't a hardware problem shared between two boards. In theory it will come back with a cold boot.

[pentium]

Re: "A Network Cable is Unplugged"

If it's a motherboard issue I find it really weird that the problem is identical on two motherboards.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: "A Network Cable is Unplugged"

Unless you have an 8 Mb or less internet service, then it will be slower than the internet service, lol. And unless you have cat3 and/or real old switches, you don't need to drop it to 10 Mbps mode.

I hope you don't still have cat 3, lol.

We're talking about a hardware fault on the motherboard here... The only thing limiting my internet speed is the switches as they're all 100Mbps. If they would be upgraded to gigabit the speed would get really silly.

10Mbps isn't all that bad, that's 3MB/sec, and that's plenty enough for all web surfing. If it works, i'm not gonna fix it.

I have half duplex on an Unix machine and it's S L O W. I can't even stream at that rate. I've been notching down from full to half and then full at the slower speed each time the connection drops.

Also, my ethernet is a Realtek RTL8169 thing. I'd totally switch to a 3com gigabit PCI card if I could find one. their cards were pretty damn bulletproof.

I use 3Com cards in my router/server (running FREESCO) and they work great... When i first built it i used cheap realteks and i think i went thru 5 of 'em in 6 months. Bought the 3Coms for next to nothing and they still hold to this day, and it's been 7 years since i first built the router. It's on its 2nd computer, but i'm still using the very same ethernet cards.

[pentium]

Re: "A Network Cable is Unplugged"

I have half duplex on an Unix machine and it's S L O W. I can't even stream at that rate. I've been notching down from full to half and then full at the slower speed each time the connection drops.

Also, my ethernet is a Realtek RTL8169 thing. I'd totally switch to a 3com gigabit PCI card if I could find one. their cards were pretty damn bulletproof.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: "A Network Cable is Unplugged"

Go to half duplex 100Mbps. If it still does it with half duplex, do yourself a favor and put in a PCI Ethernet card. Does your motherboard have a Marvell chip for onboard ethernet? They had issues.

Still getting it after all of those? Replace caps next to PCI slots and around the onboard ethernet. I have a board that's doing it too, but i can't be arsed to care about it since it works at 10Mbps full duplex and i don't use that computer too often.

Unless you have an 8 Mb or less internet service, then it will be slower than the internet service, lol. And unless you have cat3 and/or real old switches, you don't need to drop it to 10 Mbps mode.

I hope you don't still have cat 3, lol.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: "A Network Cable is Unplugged"

Go to half duplex 100Mbps. If it still does it with half duplex, do yourself a favor and put in a PCI Ethernet card. Does your motherboard have a Marvell chip for onboard ethernet? They had issues.

Still getting it after all of those? Replace caps next to PCI slots and around the onboard ethernet. I have a board that's doing it too, but i can't be arsed to care about it since it works at 10Mbps full duplex and i don't use that computer too often.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: "A Network Cable is Unplugged"

Think again.
We had our telephone line replaced a few months ago and yes, they replaced the modem/router combo while they were there.

Anyways, the last week I've been slowly notching down the speed. I'm at full duplex 10 megabit and still seeing issues. WGA also wants to re-validate because I plugged in my ipod so I'll take this window to finish the backup and reinstall clean slate from another install CD.

That's gay! That's worse than when Windows tells me to reboot, just because I connected a USB drive!
(which isn't supposed to happen)

Come on ReactOS!

[pentium]

Re: "A Network Cable is Unplugged"

Think again.
We had our telephone line replaced a few months ago and yes, they replaced the modem/router combo while they were there.

Anyways, the last week I've been slowly notching down the speed. I'm at full duplex 10 megabit and still seeing issues. WGA also wants to re-validate because I plugged in my ipod so I'll take this window to finish the backup and reinstall clean slate from another install CD.

[LLLlllou]

Re: "A Network Cable is Unplugged"

Sounds like the one thing you haven't swapped is the modem/router. Any chance you can get your ISP to send you a new one? Unlike most of the people who've chimed in to tell you to do things you've already done, I've actually read ALL of your posts. It's unlikely that you'd have this issue on only one computer connected to the modem/router, but it would definitely rule it out as source of the problem.

Also try sticking a new NIC in there and see what happens, could be some bizarre interaction with the onboard NIC chipset. Short of that, a new PSU, and the Linux live CD, you might want to get your hands on some holy water and garlic.

[severach]

Re: "A Network Cable is Unplugged"

Set the speed to 10Mbps. This covers and solves an amazing number of cable, switch, NIC, and NWay compatibility problems.

Do your test installs to another hard drive so if the problem turns out to not be your bloated install of Windows you can just put it back.

[ant3202]

Re: "A Network Cable is Unplugged"

check PC power supply also

[Mad_Professor]

Re: "A Network Cable is Unplugged"

Try by-passing the switch completely. Connect the pc in question to the first network port only then reset the router and reconfigure it for that pc as master. Be sure to to set the router for port forwarding. A switch should not be used between a pc and router. switches by themselves can not handle internet traffic properly.

That shows how much you know about networking 101. Switches are used all over the world. Layer 2 switches are the standard and practically used in corporate, industry, residential; and managed switches can do dhcp and more, assuming you have a gateway upstream. Layer 3 are practically routers with out wan interface then you have routers.

The ones that can't handle internet traffic, more like has trouble handling packets and are only used for packet capturing are layer 1 switches, known as hubs or dumb switches. These create too much congestion and should be used only for very small network deployments, or final mile setups in a big network like at a work station of 2-4 computers coming from a port on the wall going back to the layer 2 or 3 switches. Layer 1 switches, can't do anything, They are just dumb, all they do is a take a packet from any port it received on and forwards it to all remaining ports. Unlike layer 2 which receives the packet, reads the header, determines where the MAC is on the network, sends it on to correct port to the next device or computer downstream.

Layer 3 are usually used to connect multiple layer 2 switches together and hook them up to a respective gateway or intranet servers.

Having too many computers on a subnet causes problems for switches. You have to break up the subnet into 16-30 different parts so that congestion doesn't cause a problem. This is done by subnet masking. This is similar to cities and postal code, when a package is sorted we know exactly what belt it's sorted to based on the city in this case the subnet ip of 192.168.0.0

When it gets to city then we have to break it down into postal codes which is where the subnet mask comes in like 255.255.255.0 and the house number and street, MAC:23:C5:14:08:52:8F using 192.168.0.50.

To get an idea of subnet masking, here is a cheat sheet.
http://www.aelius.com/njh/subnet_sheet.html
Also this one is good since it shows what type of network class, like class C, B, A then just below what ip ranges can be used for subnet mask
http://www.oav.net/mirrors/cidr.html

But of course this is used for IPv4, it's much different on IPv6 which uses unique addresses, that integrates subnet mask into it's address.

[Mad_Professor]

Re: "A Network Cable is Unplugged"

Then where the hell is the break?? I have performed every possible troubleshooting step possible. I've ruled out EVERYTHING. I even went out of my way to REPLACE hardware to the point I'm literally running a completely different system and a brand new run of network cable. I've reduced the number of physical network connections between the modem to the minimal possible configuration. This problem is exclusive to THIS windows install on THIS computer.

You know what? Fine. I'll risk running out of valid uses of my Windows key and reinstall again and spend my weekend reinstalling and reconfiguring everything. Are you happy?

Just run a live cd of linux, like ubuntu or fedora. Also if your XP key runs out of onlines uses, just phone activate, it's not that hard. I do it all the time, takes like 10 minutes.

[Sparkey55]

Re: "A Network Cable is Unplugged"

Try by-passing the switch completely. Connect the pc in question to the first network port only then reset the router and reconfigure it for that pc as master. Be sure to to set the router for port forwarding. A switch should not be used between a pc and router. switches by themselves can not handle internet traffic properly.

[pentium]

Re: "A Network Cable is Unplugged"

this is almost certainly hardware!

Then where the hell is the break?? I have performed every possible troubleshooting step possible. I've ruled out EVERYTHING. I even went out of my way to REPLACE hardware to the point I'm literally running a completely different system and a brand new run of network cable. I've reduced the number of physical network connections between the modem to the minimal possible configuration. This problem is exclusive to THIS windows install on THIS computer.

You know what? Fine. I'll risk running out of valid uses of my Windows key and reinstall again and spend my weekend reinstalling and reconfiguring everything. Are you happy?