strange network problem

[enhanced08]

ok i have a machine dual booting with XP Pro and Mandrake 10. i have a cable internet connection shared on a network. yesterday i was on the XP machine looking for BIOS updates, my board came with a "Live update" program and i was looking at it, i found a program called i-speed or something. its a network monitor. it looked kinda neat so i dowloaded it. once installed i decided i didn't like it so i deleted it. no problems. i downloaded a virus scan update andrestarted the computer and now i have no network!! ran virus scan, nothing. messed and messed, even re installed the OS onto 2 different HDDs and i still have no internet/network. while i had the dual boot HDD installed, i could boot to mandrake and get online with out any problem but XP wont! whats wrong here??

thanks!

[rightcoast]

Sounds to me like it corrupted your ethernet driver, try reinstalling your motherboard/ethernet drivers and see if that fixes it.

[enhanced08]

even if it works with mandrake and after 2 fresh installs of XP? wouldn't the driver be deleted and reinstalled with XP?

[rightcoast]

Linux uses a completely different way to set up network drivers (or any driver for that matter) so it would still work even if your XP driver was corrupted. In fact this was my biggest clue, this tells me port didn't break.

Yes, XP may not install that ethernet driver. It may be part of your motherboard drivers. Check thier site, try to reinstall them. It is probably the case. Did you build the PC yourself? Do you remember installing mobo drivers? If it is a Dell or Gateway or whatever, the driver issue is almost certainly the case.

[enhanced08]

o ok, the computer is the one in my sig. i will try reinstalling the driver and see if that helps any. also i noticed that when i set the CPU back to stock speeds (i have it OC'ed) it works fine, but when i up the FSB again it doesn't work anymore. could this also be driver issues?

[rightcoast]

Yep, another clue it's your mobos drivers. You should be fine after reinstalling them.

[enhanced08]

i reinstalled the drivers (its not onboard, don't know if that matters or not) and it seems to work fine while its at stock speeds, once i OC it again it now shows thats its connected but if you ouble click the icon in the taskbar it says Invalad IP address. i tried to "repair" it but that didn't work.

[rightcoast]

The ethernet works fine at stock speeds right? Hmm lemme think for a few, meanwhile scale it back just so you can use it.

[rightcoast]

It may be that your PSU isn't giving enough power when it is OC'd....

Or maybe that OC'ing can cuase an IRQ conflict? I don't OC so I don't know, that sounds all wrong to me but I am just tying to brainstorm ideas for you to check on.

[enhanced08]

yeah, no problems at all!! when i try to get online, it seems like the page is loading, just very very slowly, then it says page can not be displayed. i can view other computers on the network and if i double click the icon in taskbar to where i can see how many packets are sent/recieved they move very slowly like i'll only get a few at a time.

it wouldn't work with the FSB at 146 but at 140 its working fine, so far. i'm in the dark on this one!!!

[enhanced08]

its a 420watt PSU so i would say it would be enough power, i hope anyway. i also don't see how it could cause an IRQ conflict.... its possible i guess. thanks for the help tho! if you or anyone else for that amtter can come up with anything else, let me know!!

EDIT: something else thats a little odd, i set the FSB to 144 and it works fine. FSB - 145 i get nothing, FSB - 146 and it works the system just isn't stable with an FSB of 146.

[rightcoast]

I am not an anti-overclocker, I just know the real worl difference between 144 and 146 is pretty much nothing. A millisecond at most. If it were me I would leave it at 144 and chalk it up to instability due to OC'ing to much.

[enhanced08]

thats what i'm doing, when all this happened i was trying to stabalize the OC. i never did find out if it was stable at 145 FSB, Prime95 only ran for about 2 hours. it seems stable at 144 so far.

thanks for the help!

[glc]

Did you lock the PCI bus at 33 MHz when you overclocked? If not, your Ethernet card may not like the overclocked bus.

[enhanced08]

everytime i read about OC'ing i read about locking the PCI bus but i have never been able to find this option in the BIOS. someone posted a link to a website that gave a description of most all BIOS options of the major brands, i wanted to look in that to see if maybe its titled something different on my board or something, but i lost the link.

[glc]

Load up Fuzzy Logic III and see what the AGP and PCI bus speeds are at your various FSB settings. I'm betting that the 645E chipset doesn't support true PCI/AGP locks, but allow for different dividers.

I'm guessing - at 144 the PCI overclock is not enough to tick the card off, but at 145 it is - and at 146 it may be shifting to a new divider to drop the PCI back down.

[enhanced08]

i can't find a copt of fuzzy logic III, i have 4 but it doesn't give the bus speeds, only FSB mulit and voltages. do you mean pc alert III by chance? i have a copy of that.

[glc]

Hmm - the manual says that Fuzzy Logic III gives you the PCI/AGP bus speeds.

[redbaron_snoopy]

I think the Fuzzy logic refers to the MSI Core Center. I don't OC so I never looked at this CC but I remember vaguely that on the left side, it display some speed and voltage settings for dynamic overclocking.

MSI advice not to use PC Alert with Fuzzy Logic. Some conflicts I presume.

[enhanced08]

well i have Fuzzy Logic 4, thats what came with my board. no where does it say the PCI speeds, only fan speed, cpu mult, fsb, vcore, mem v, agp v, and cpu temp.