Network weirdness in Vista

Fresh install of Vista Business on my E1705, and have noticed some weirdness with the networking (actually, with the Network Center and network connections screens).

First, even though the network cable is plugged in and working, my network connections still shows a RED "X" on that network connection. When I unplug it, it shows disconnected, and then "connected" when I plug it back in, but the RED "X" stays.

Second, my wired connection had inherited the name of my wireless connection. When I am plugged in with the wired connection, Network Center shows the network I am connected to the same name as my wireless. That is VERY CONFUSING.

Anyone else have these issues?

 

That sounds like a driver issue. When WinXP came out this problem was common. 9 times out of 10 it turned out to be a driver that did not fully support the OS. I would first and formost try to find an updated VISTA driver for your network card.

 

With all these recent issues/problems about Vista -- it will be a long time before I finally upgrade. This Vista stuff is getting out of hand.

 

I have tried both the Vista-native driver for my NIC and I also installed a new driver from dell.com for my E1705 and Vista (the driver said it was explicitly for Vista 32-bit). Either way, the red "X" stays. Maybe the "X" means something else than what we're used to...

I also figured out how to change the name of the LAN connection. My question is, though, is what good is that name? Am I naming the network adapter, the network that it is currently connected to (and will Vista ask me again to name it when I connect to a different subnet?), or something completely different? Anyone know?

Thanks!

 

Nope the x still means the same thing. But this is a NEW OS so there are going to be problems. Hell they have already started working on SP1. They have been working on it for a while, so that should tell you something.

 

Recent issues/problems? How long has Vista Gold been out? Obviously, you're too young to have experienced an operating system release before this.

 

Vista Business is working just fine for me

 

nah vista still got bugs

 

I haven't had a chance to play with the full Vista release yet, but does that have something to do with Vista's new firewall protection scheme?

 

Yes. Vista still has bugs. I can confirm that they are indeed working on SP1. In fact Longhorn will be akin to Vista SP1 in that they are likely to be released very close to each other. The issue that is being described is a driver issue. Nothing more or less. The problem comes around where the broadcom ethernet adapter on the motherboard has no vista driver yet from Dell. Neither does my wireless adapter. Oops. I forgot I replaced mine with a gigabyte brand adapter which does have a vista driver. But here are 2 issues I came across on my desktop.


ICS can cause data corruption. When data is going from a dialup adapter over to an ethernet adapter it gets corrupted during the transition. The host computer downloads fine using the dialup adapter and the host can transfer back and forth between the guest computer just fine but when ics is involved for internet access then corruption occurs periodically. Usually shows itself as a corrupted download.


Connections shared via ICS may disappear occasionally. In this case both the actual internet connection and the connection it is being shared through disappears. It is still there and connected. It just isn't visable. Disconnecting and reconnecting or rebooting the computer will work around the issue. Or you can simply ignore it as it is a cosmetic bug.

 

Very interesting observation- is that your personal experience or is that something you read somewhere? Perhaps that's worth sending a note to Microsoft.

 

Both of those bugs are ones that I have observed personally over the past 2 months with the final code. That will be the same code that you have gotten or will get. I would let Microsoft know but I can't recall which channel I should be going through.

Also the second bug is not easily reproduced. It happens at very random occasions with no real consistency to it.

Oh and if I can reproduce the original one at the beginning of the thread then I'll file a bug but I would still point it at a driver issue.