m15x: Intermittent LAN Failure

Does everyone get this or just me? Whenever I boot without a network attached to my Ethernet jack (wired), there's a good chance the network card won't even show up in Vista (or any operating system for that matter)...

It's weird.

Kinda like the Eject lag.

 

Happened to my Realtek Ethernet card one time on my Toshiba, sometime i boot up and the card is not even detected for power / in device manager.


This is how i got it to appear everytime;
Download driver update from manufacturer of the LAN cards website.

Start up the laptop so that the LAN card DOES appear in device manager, uninstall the current driver.

restart

Install new driver

restart again.

This fixed it for me, hope it helps you too.

 

The only flaw in the "driver" theory is that, it's done this to me in vista (both home premium and business), Ubuntu Linux, and, most recently, BackTrack 3 Linux.

So drivers as the problem, are out.

 

What power setting is your notebook currently on?

 

Hey, love that ALienware James is getting involved. THis is a problem I have too. I tend to find it only happens on restarts. If I shut down and leave the 15x for ten minutes and reboot then its consistently fine. I'm guessing maybe heat related?

 

I don't see how the power setting could have an effect, since it's happening across different operating systems, however, I havn't noticed a trend via the power profiles (in vista)... sometimes I'm in power saver, other times, high performance.

I'd like to stress that when this occurs, the device is GONE from device manager, and /dev/eth0 becomes an invalid device (or simply doesn't exist) under linux.

I most commonly have this problem when starting up cold without a network connected to the physical jack (a network that's working... eg, if I have a cable, that's connected to a powered-off hub, it's the same as if I don't have a cable on there at all). Often making me connect the network and restart my system to enable the NIC.

The only trend I've noticed with this is: it seems to happen less frequently when I'm connected to a network before turning on my m15x. I notice it most frequently when connecting to a network after the computer has started.

In fact, I can't distinctly recall an instance where the Wired NIC has been present on the system after starting without media connected. Except under linux. (which seems to have a considerably lower fail rate... perhaps the init routines in linux can "turn on" the card after boot more often? )

Edit: I'm doing some testing now to try and cause the network card to fail in all usable OS's (Vista, Ubuntu, BT3)... so far the only OS I can't distinctly recall the NIC ever failing in, and I havn't had fail yet (through testing) is BT3 (BackTrack 3, based on Slackware). I have a screen cap of Ubuntu failing to init the card, and I know Vista does (quite frequently too).

I'll keep everyone posted. Screens of the failures soon.

 

My system has started doing this since its first repair usually rebooting both the machine and the network (router) fixes the problem but its irritating that it happens

 

I've had successful failures in all OS's.

Vista Home Premium 32-bit (original OS with the system)
Vista Business 64-bit (Current windows OS)
Ubuntu Linux 64-bit (based on Debian, dual-boot with Vista Business)
BackTrack 3 Linux (based on Slax (Slackware), booted from a 'live-cd' like partition over USB)

I have screens from Ubuntu, BT3, and I'm working on getting (yet another) failure from Vista for a screenshot. I can't get Vista Home Premium failure screen capture, since I only know that it failed historically. It's no longer installed on the system.

All three OS's failed under similar conditions:

Cold boot, first boot, no network connected on boot.

I'll be retrying my tests using a cold boot with a network connected on boot.

 

Screens!

Vista Fail: here
Ubuntu Fail: here
Backtrack3 Fail: here

Finally, a comparison of Device listings in Vista's Device Manager (sorted by connection) for analysis: here

The last screen, I think, is the most useful. Because on the left pane, the NIC is not present, on the right pane, it is. what's interesting to me is that the HOST DEVICE (PCI Express Root 6) also disappears, which, to me, indicates that the problem is not the NIC itself, but something on the ICH8 PCI Express Bus.

Just throwing wild theories for now... anyone else care to comment?

Edit: Update: Turning on my laptop this morning (while it was connected to a Gigabit Switch), the network card again failed to initialize. This tells me that the problem is persistent (for me) to cold-boots. I'll be keeping a closer eye on this than I have before.

 

bump. ideas?

 

Bump. Really becoming a very annoying issue at this point. I'm getting it on cold boots and restarts. Really embarrasing at a LAN party everyone's all "wow", "awesome laptop", then I have to restart a dozen times just to get my LAN card to work. Epic fail.

Yeah, I assume your understanding of this stuff completely eclipses mine, but if I can do anything to help let me know. Also, don't know how relevant this is, but I'm pretty sure our configureations are identical other than the GPU....

 

Im having this problem since day 1 in June. Saw this thread for the first time today though :s. Its very rare that I get it on after a cold boot. A restart usually fixes it, although I must add that a second restart usually takes it back to square one. Complained to them in June. and a few times after that, still nothing on that front.

 

I think we'll need a new BIOS to fix the issue... perhaps the LAN card initializes a little slower than expected, causing the BIOS to NOT register it. But sometimes the NIC is fast enough to start with the rest of the computer.

this theory seems to hold true for me, due to the fact that a card that was recently powered on, would have a faster start-time than one that wasn't. (though, the difference is probably less than 1 sec.)...giving the card that extra .25 of a second to post might mean the difference between it always working, and it intermittently failing.

It is just a theory though.

 

What then about the second part of of the problem, where a second restart takes it back to not detecting the card?

 

could be the same issue... I don't have that one on mine, so I have no idea... does your BIOS take noticeably different times to boot when it works/doesn't?

 

I saw above that AW James offered to talk to you. I assume that yeilded no results?

 

I'm just not prepared to send in my unit for diagnosis/debugging, etc. I'm in the middle of a semester right now....

 

I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but if that's why you're holding off on support progress, would you mind adding your vote here? I'd like to see if I can get a fair number of people to demonstrate to Alienware that their current onsite support policies are ridiculous. (For example: sending it back in for diagnosis or debugging? Yeesh, any other manufacturer offering that would just replace your motherboard onsite for you!)

 

Mystik, do you by any chance have AIM or MSN?

 

I've been sucked into the toxic web of MSN. if you'd like to make contact that way, just send me a PM.

 

Kk, well it's been a long while now; has anyone found a fix for this?

 

I personally haven't been able to reproduce the issue to find out where it's coming from. Are you experiencing it as well Redbear?

 

I am indeed. Does seem that unplugging the ethernet cable increases the chance of it appearing after boot.... Mystik's thing on boot time seems a pretty good explanation. How would we go about increasing the time it gets to post?

 

I did this by setting a BIOS boot password. you can set one by hitting F2 while booting and setting up the password... I forget which tab it's under.

It makes the system more secure, but requires more interaction at boot time... the workaround is simply, let the system boot to the password prompt, wait a second, reboot, and everything should be fine...

but this works around mine, which only seems to happen on cold boots.

the workaround gives it a warm boot to work with and therefore it works consistently.

good luck.

 

Ever since my machine got back from the hinge repairs, there has not been a single time where the LAN wasn't detected on startup.

 

I have the BIOS pass on boot too, but the problem for me sometimes is that after cold boot, the system will stop right after the BIOS are shadowed...and I have to reboot again to let it pass.

That's weird, I never heard of LAN is not been detected by BIOS...