Tried new cable, made sure I had the most upto date drivers from Realtek,
turned the switcher off and on, tried in different ports (when I connected
mine to the port that was only allowing 100, it was connecting at 1000)....
Only thing I haven't done it connect the machines directly, only because
I've just got in from work, and I'm tired, can't be getting down the back of
my machine at the mo, but I think it will achieve the same thing....
Settings in Advanced are...
Is it a RT8169 chipset based card? Maybe it doesn't matter
regarding 100Mb vs 1000Mb, but for my recommendation below
about Jumbo Frames, because with RT8169 cards the driver
limited jumbo frame support to a max of 7K instead of 9K at
some point (a few versions ago, IIRC).
802.1Q/1p VLAN Tagging = Disable
Flow Control = Enable
Jumbo Frame = Disable
Providing your switch supports jumbo frames, enabling this
will give you lower CPU utilization, and/or higher
performance with a loaded system or struggling/older CPU.
If your switch doesn't support jumbo frames, it might still
support around 4K frames, so if you have intermediary
options instead of just enable/disable for jumbo frames,
pick whichever applies.
Link Speed/Duplex Mode = Auto Negotiation (even when forced to 1000, still
only connects at 100)
Network Address = Not Present
Offload Checksom = Tx/Rx Checksum
Offload TCP_LargeSend = Disable
Might as well try this enabled, but it won't fix the problem
either, (Jumbo frames was not the problem, just performance
tweaking suggestions).
Wake-On_Lan After Shutdown = Disable
Wake-On_lan Speed = 10/100Mbps
Is there another option for this like 1000Mb or 1Gb?
Anything else I could look for?
Since they both have the same NIC, the settings from one
should equally work on the other.
To back up a moment, the conclusion about link speed is from
the link status lights on the nic and/or switch, OR is it
from the network properties in windows (or both?) ?
Since they are the same card, the next thing I would do is
disconnect both systems from AC, power off switch, swap the
systems' nics back and forth and see if the same system has
the problem, or the same nic does (powering the switch back
on only after having swapped the NICs, it will be necessary
to reset it's tables and unless a managed switch, power
cycling it is the most obvious way to do that).
If you still have the problem with the same NIC instead of
same system, I would suspect the NIC is defective. I've
come across a fair number of defective low-end RT869 NICs in
the past couple years. It's not to knock 'em because
they're RT8169 based (better that than the Via alternative
in the low-end, IMO) but it seems QC and testing on these
cheap NICs just allows a lot of defective parts to ship. I
happen to have a defective RT8169 in front of me right now,
but (LOL) I can't remember which of two nics it is! One is
a Trendnet TEG-PCITXR and the other is Airnet AEG100. I
think the Trendnet is the bad one, because I vaguely recall
digging the Airnet out of a drawer for identification
purposes after I'd received a letter notifying me of
Airnet's bandruptcy but at the time couldn't remember what
I'd bought from Airnet.
You might also inpect the card contacts in the RJ45 jack,
maybe there's just some flux or other manufacturing residue
inside that needs cleaned off.
