[TheDragon]

I have a bit of a networking problem...

I have 2 computers, with an NIC each. One is an AMD, and the other is a pentium 3 (for reference). Anyway, the Pentium 3 has a Linksys LNE100 Fast Ethernet Adapater (10/100). The AMD machine has a Netgear FA311 adapter. Both are PCI. I'm running WinXP 2509.

Now check this out; I'm not using a hub, but am using a crossover cable to directly connect each pc. If I set up networking with the MS networking wizard, everything sets up fine; I've run the wizard on both computers, same workgroup, but upon restarting etc they both say that there is a network cable unplugged. I thought this was the work of a bad ISA NIC, so I went out and bought a new PCI NIC. They both still say the cable is unplugged.

Both cards connect to a cable modem just fine, and it reports the link as being satisfactory (using a regular RJ45 cable). So it would seem its the brand new crossover cable I have? I don't think so, because the cards exhibit some odd behavior; the pentium 3 system (and only the p3 system) shows that the connection is working and there is no cables disconnected when the AMD system is turned off or restarted, BEFORE it boots into winxp. Right when the XP startup screen comes up, the p3 reports that the "network cable is unplugged"; also, if I turn the AMD system off, again, the P3 system reports a good connection, but if I remove the cable from the AMD's powered-down NIC port, the P3 reports that the connection is once again disconnected.

I cannot figure out why the above behavior would appear, and why only one system would show it. The AMD system shows the same error message every time, even while the P2 is off, "network cable unplugged". I tried switching the cards from each system, and the behavior follows the card. I have no other pcs or operating systems to test this on, so I was wondering if anyone thinks its windows XP's drivers for the NIC cards. Rememeber, both cards work hooked up to a cable modem (as in the network no long says that a cable is unplugged). This is really getting on my nerves, because I know to set up a simple peer to peer network shouldn't involve this much hardware trouble.

If anyone has any solutions or suggestions, i would be happy to try them and report back with their results. It seems each computer will connect to the cable modem, but not to themselves (with a crossover cable instead of a regular RJ45) and its driving me nuts!

Help! =)

[miku]

Please make a diagram of the connection.

Hard to understand. Would help better if a diagram is available.

Thanks.

[FatFish]

Did you try getting a hub or a swtich to connect to both of them?

[ThC 129]

ive never had a problem using a cross over cable in any of the setup's ive used. Cracks have been known to break file sharing too.

[TheDragon]

Well, I suppose I could draw a diagram, but it would be fairly simple. Its 2 computers, right next to each other, with a crossover cable connecting them =)

The confusing thing about my first post is the bahvior, because it is very strange. I still have not got winXP to detect that a cable is not "disconnected", so the network setup won't work. Grrr.

[TheDragon]

I do not have a hub or switch or router to test the connection on. I was trying to set up a quick, 2 computer network to do some multiplayer gaming on until I have enough to put up a full blown network for a lan party, but as of right now I'm just trying to work with a cost effective cross-over cable. The only thing I have to test the connection with is the computer's connection to a cable modem using RJ45 cables, and both of my comps connect to it just fine. It sounds like the crossover cable is the problem, but the connection does work (according to winxp) when one of the computers is turned off, and the other on. Very odd... I doubt upgrading to the new, final release of XP would help?

[FatFish]

could it be one card is 10M and the other one is 10/100?
just a thought

[TheDragon]

Well, the cable says 10/100 on it, and so do both cards.

[AndyFair]

OK - it could be a problem with autosensing - try forcing both cards to use either 10 or 100Mbps and see if that helps.

It could be that, since it's a direct connection, the autosensing has problems sensing cable speed when the other PC is off, so it stops trying - in effect, 1 NIC is saying "What speed are you running at?", and since the other PC is off, it's not getting a response, so just sits and sulks.

Using a hub would solve the problem because the it would always be there to say "Here I am, I run at 10Mbps" - and no more sulks!


Of course, I'm probably spectacularly wrong (it happens with amazing regularity )

AndyF

[TheDragon]

AHhhhhhhhhhhhh!! Problem solved!! Well, I'm still having trouble with packet lossage, but this was the problem with the cable reportedly being disconnected. Andyfair suggested that I had my cards set to auto-detect speed (which I did, WinXP sets them up as such). Anyway, he said that perhaps since both cards 10/100, and since they come from different manufacturers, that they might be having trouble agreeing on a speed. Well, I set one of them to 10mbs and the other one I suppose "autodetected" that speed and the network works! They see eachother! Finally =D Thanks for all of those that helped in this problem.

But, I have another question to those experienced in networking (as I am not). I seem to be experiencing major packet lossage with this network that I now have set up now. The computers can see eachother, and I can share files, but the browsing of the other computer's files takes like 25 seconds to list the contents of a folder (is it supposed to take that long?) Here is a ping report, pinging 1 comp to antoher (server to the client, actually).

Pinging 192.168.0.18 with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.0.18: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.0.18: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.0.18: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.0.18: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.0.18: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.0.18: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128

Ping statistics for 192.168.0.18:
Packets: Sent = 17, Received = 6, Lost = 11 (64% loss)

As you can see, when the ping actually goes through, the time is very fast, but I'm losing over 1/2 of them! That's not cool for muliplayer gaming =( I know the IP should be the next increment of what my network is (my server is ~.1 and my client should be ~.2, but XP set the IP as ~.18).
I would appreciate any light on the situation, as you guys were very very helpful during the last problem ;-)

[Lythium]

That last post really sounds like a funktified nic bugging out.

[TheDragon]

It was the ghetto etherfast PCI card. Now it works fine with a lot of switching around etc; definatley odd.