help with lan!!!

[rwhiteside]

I have an interesting scenario: the LAN card, which is integrated into the motherboard of a Dell P-2 desktop computer, has no lights on it; including the green or amber lights. Which I would think would mean its dead, however, the Win 95 recongnizes it via Plug N Play. What would cause this? Is it possible the LAN is still good?

Thanks!

[Midknyte]

What model is the desktop? I've had to reset the firmware on the nics before using the 3com software. The nic was detected as a 3c90x series card. it might be different from yours, but i downloaded the drivers (disks 1 and 2) and ran 3c90xcfg from dos. there should be an option to auto configure. :D

[smily_03]

is the card hooked into the network? In several instances that I've seen, the card will only 'light up' when it's got an active link. The best things to do are:
->hook the card up to a hub, then try to hook up another computer to that hub. Just hooking up to a hub should light up the link light on both the NIC and the hub.
->do an internal loopback ping (go to a command prompt in windows and type "ping localhost" or "ping 127.0.0.1". you should get four successful replies. This tests the inner workings of the NIC
->try to ping the other computer on the LAN if you'd hooked it up. (so if my other computer was named Millennia with an IP address of 172.16.1.10, I would do either a "ping millennia" or "ping 172.16.1.10" from the command prompt)
->see if the manufacturer of your NIC has some sort of diagnostic program you can use to check the NIC.

The best way to find out if this network card is working is to try it out!

Good Luck!

[rwhiteside]

Do you know on which computers or lan cards that you have seen that did not light up when they did not have a live connection feeding into them? The one I got is an integrated LAN card on a dell mobo; its made by 3COM

[Midknyte]

What model of Dell is it? I've worked on GX1s and GXas before. It might just be a dead board, but you should check the ping localhost like smily said. If you don't get anything from that, then you can run the diagnostics. They are included with the driver disks. I'm pretty sure it will be a 3c90x driver. the 3c90xcfg is worth a shot. I thought i had a dead board, until some tech guy at dell told me to run the 3c90xcfg. it's on disk2 of the drivers. I thought he was just being a butthole, but it ended up working. :D

[rwhiteside]

Nope, no dead boad or LAN card; it just was not recieving a signal. Unlike my lan card, which will have a green light wether it recieves a signal or not, the dell lan card will not light up without a signal. So I was about to hook it up to a hub and a different port in the office, but all the sudden it wanted to work. I don't know why it choose then, but the light came back on so I input the IP addresses and Gateways and such and it works now. Wierd, but least it works now.

[Midknyte]

Geez. I assumed that you had the unit plugged into something. oh well. as long as it's working. :D

[rwhiteside]

It was plugged up -- the whole time.

[Midknyte]

Oh. my bad. :rolleyes:

[pinkey777]

I had a computer at work that had an integrated NIC, when we upgraded it to WIN2k, I had trouble getting it to configure the NIC.

After much horsing around, I disabled the integrated NIC in BIOS and put a $15 NIC in the box. Problem solved.

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