Onboard network controller tale

  • Thread starter Thread starter mailbox
  • Start date Start date
M

mailbox

I was about to give up on the onboard network
controller in the MSI motherboard I've just
bought for a new box. The hardware connection
to my router was okay -- the little LEDs said so.
Windows XP's setup wizards told me I had "successfully"
set up a local network. But ipconfig still
showed that no-good IP number and ipconfig/renew
got the "limited or no connectivity" message.
From threads in this newsgroup, I learned
that I should check the BIOS to see if the
onboard LAN was enabled. It was. So,
because I had loaded XP without the network
wire connected, as a last resort I decided to
connect it first, then reload XP and then
_all_ the motherboard drivers, instead of just
the LAN driver. This didn't work either, so
I powered down and went to bed.

This morning I decided to turn on that mysterious
"LAN Boot ROM" toggle I had noticed in the BIOS.
When boot completed, I had connectivity!
A Google search on "LAN Boot ROM" shows that
it has nothing to do with establishing
connectivity per se. So I turned it off and
rebooted. I still have connectivity!

I can't remember whether I had momentarily
powered down last night at any point after reloading
everything. But certainly there had been
a couple of automatic reboots. Could turning
on the LAN Boot ROM have gotten my connectivity
or was it just from powering down?
 
I discovered a complicating factor. It turns out that I had, long ago,
set the router to accept a maximum of two devices connected to it.
Apparently this restricted the table of physical addresses of NICs to
two. It was already filled up with my old computer and my wife's
computer. When I finally got the new computer to be recognized by the
router. it was because it managed to bump my wife's computer out of
that table. Now that I've set the maximum number of devices to three,
maybe my connectivity problems will go away for good.
 
Back
Top