Network Problems

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Last week I bought a gigabit switch to replace my old knackered 10mb hub, the computer i'm using now has a gigabit card built in but my girlfriends PC only had a 100mb network card fitted.

I thought upgrading would be a case of simply uninstalling the old network card, plugging the new card (a Linksys EG1032) in and installing the drivers. Then make sure DHCP is enabled so it can pick up an IP from the router and away we go!

But instead of being that simple the thing refuses to work. The network lights are on but not flashing and not matter how many times I uninstall and reinstall the drivers / move the card to another PCI slot the card just wont pick up an IP address.

It's driving me crackers and my girlfriend has gone off in a huff cos she needed to access her pc whilst connected to the internet to do some college work :(

I've also tried unplugging the new card and putting the old one back but even this now refuses to connect to the network properly!!

The PC will ping itself (127.0.0.1) but not any other PC on the network, the PC wont connect to shared drives on other pc's (eg \\Mashrok\C) and i've checked the cable (CAT 6 cable) and it works fine on this PC.

I just cant figure out what the problem is!!

btw im using an ADSL router connected to a 5 port Netgear Gigabit Switch.

Any helpful suggestions or obvious answers will be greatly appreciated.
 
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No joy i'm afraid :(

I set the IP address to 192.168.0.26, Subnet 255.255.255.0, Default Gateway 192.168.0.1 (router address) and DNS also to 192.168.0.1 but when I go into Network status details the Gateway shows up blank as though it hasnt connected.

One good thing i've just spotted now though is that I can connect to the shared drives on my Girlfriends PC though she for some reason can't connect to my PC still.

Btw all firewalls on both PC's are off (Router hardware firewall is still on)

It just feels as though there's some hidden tickbox somewhere that needs ticking to get the thing working normally again, it's so infuriating!!
 
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I decided to goto bed last night before I threw the PC out the window, still couldn't fix this problem :(

I've been looking for solutions using google but haven't found anything useful yet. Plus i'm at work now so can't do anything about it yet but i've been thinking, could the Router be looking for the old network card as a MAC address or something and because it associates the old MAC address with the old card it won't allow the new card to connect until it's been cleared?

This wouldn't explain why the old card doesn't work when it's reinstalled though unless whenever windows installs a new network card it assign it a new MAC address.

I'm clutching at straws at the moment, trying to think of anything possible.

Anyone got anymore ideas before I get home and start putting dents in the side of the case? :p
 
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Oh yeah, I also forgot to mention last night that when the computer is set to Auto IP it picks up what is apparently called an APIPA address generated by windows - 169.254.x.x Im assuming this is generated when there's no network at all as well though
 
Soldato
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If the machine is getting a 169.254.x.x address then it can't get an address by DHCP so Windows trys to be helpful and assign itself one.

It sounds like a buggered Windows installation or driver to me, you can browse network shares using NetBios so TCP/IP may be hosed.
 
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