So I come to you all for help on this problem I am having. Specs will be listed below for reference. I have been using the built in NIC on my motherboard now since I built this computer about a year and a half ago and I have recently been having problems staying connected to a server (hosts a campus wide chat as well as other services) that one of my programs connects to. This has now gotten to the point that I can only be connected for 3-5 minutes at a time before my connection to the server drops. It has also gotten to the point where I am unable to connect and or stay connected to AIM or MSN messengers, and when I am trying to surf the web it is very slow if it ever does load the pages.

setup information:
I live in a dorm and am connected to the residential network via ethernet.
specs:
AMD X2 4600
Asus M2N32-SLI deluxe wifi edition motherboard
2 gig (2x1gig pair) corsair ram
other stuff that should have no impact on this problem
running Windows XP
also running ubuntu and netbsd virtual machines in vmware

Attempted fixes and checks(so far all have failed):
release and renew ip address (each mac address is assigned a "static" ip but it is assigned via DHCP)
reinstall and update network drivers
checked function of ethernet cable and port in room using laptop
have pinged server which is within the residential network as well as external websites, no noticeable problems with the ping connection. (even while i was unable to connect)
roommate has had no connection problems durring this same time
can connect to the server and internet with no problems using laptop

I did recently update my bios, but I have not had any other problems from that. I may try to roll my bios back to the previous version or try reinstalling the new bios. Before I do that though I ask you all, is anything else I should try?

any and all help is greatly appreciatted, thank you.

bump, anybody out there with some ideas for me?

I was having a similar issue a while back, and I believe it was being caused by a trojan. In my search i came across a program called Vundofix that was supposed locate and remove and files that may be associated with it. I had to run the program 2 or 3 times before it finally removed everything. I had tried AVG and a few other anti-virus and anti-spyware programs but none of them picked up the infected files.

I would also suggest to buy or borrow a PCI NIC and see if that works.

But I'm most suspicious of your bios update. How soon after you updated the bios, did you start having this problem? If the bios is the problem then a PCI NIC should work fine. But why did you even bother to update the bios? I've never really seen any benefit of doing so, unless it adds some features for overclocking.

I was having a similar issue a while back, and I believe it was being caused by a trojan. In my search i came across a program called Vundofix that was supposed locate and remove and files that may be associated with it. I had to run the program 2 or 3 times before it finally removed everything. I had tried AVG and a few other anti-virus and anti-spyware programs but none of them picked up the infected files.

I would also suggest to buy or borrow a PCI NIC and see if that works.

But I'm most suspicious of your bios update. How soon after you updated the bios, did you start having this problem? If the bios is the problem then a PCI NIC should work fine. But why did you even bother to update the bios? I've never really seen any benefit of doing so, unless it adds some features for overclocking.

Quote: Originally Posted by 67_GTO I was having a similar issue a while back, and I believe it was being caused by a trojan. In my search i came across a program called Vundofix that was supposed locate and remove and files that may be associated with it. I had to run the program 2 or 3 times before it finally removed everything. I had tried AVG and a few other anti-virus and anti-spyware programs but none of them picked up the infected files. I would also suggest to buy or borrow a PCI NIC and see if that works. But I'm most suspicious of your bios update. How soon after you updated the bios, did you start having this problem? If the bios is the problem then a PCI NIC should work fine. But why did you even bother to update the bios? I've never really seen any benefit of doing so, unless it adds some features for overclocking.

First off I will try that program and see if that picks anything up.

Second I was thinking that if I could find someone around with a pci nic that I would try that out, but right now I dont know anyone with one. I will definately look around if the first thing doesnt work.

I am somewhat suspicious of the bios update as well, which is why I mentioned it. It was a couple days between the update and the problem getting bad, but I was having the problem earlier with the connection dropping, just not nearly as often. Also there were some added options to the bios that I wanted to check out which is why I updated. So rolling back my bios, or reflashing it, is on my list of possible things to try

Side note, I had a bit of a long night last night (and morning), with a friend that just turned 21 on thursday so I am going to try to get a bit more sleep if I can before I work on this today, but thank you for the advice and I will get to working on it when I am felling the after math a little less .

Well I tried Vundofix and that didnt find anything so I guess I need to try one of the other solutions. I also tried reflashing the bios as well as reinstalling the network drivers. Neither of these did anything to fix it.

Now when I try to connect to a network I am getting the "Limited or no connectivity" error for that connection. I tried hitting the "Repair" button in the connection status window which failed right away, so I went to the command prompt and use the "ipconfig /renew" command and got the following error message, "An error occurred while renewing interface Local Area Connection 4 : An operation was attempted on something that is not a socket." First off my LAN connections have been labeled 4 and 5 for a long time so, Second, does anyone have any idea how that error could come up? I am hoping that maybe someone around here has seen an error like that before and has some idea on what to do about it.

Also I tried booting off of a linux live cd to see if the network interface would work better, or at all, under linux, and it did not. This points me away from thinking that it is a software issue, and more of a hardware issue, which I am not real happy about but maybe that will help narrow it down as far as what to look at for fixing it.

Once again thanks for any help.

So it seems that I may have fixed the problem, at least for the most part. I did a search for that error message and came up with a result that was on the microsoft help and support page, basically it told me to remove the winsock and winsock2 entries in the registry followed by reinstalling the tcp/ip protocol. I did this and now I am at least able to surf the internet and connect to AIM and MSN messenger.

Unfortunately it is not completely fixed as I am still getting issues with connections being dropped. Also when watching the connection status screen there are times, when loading web pages for instance when it seems that there should be packets either being sent or received.

Interesting new symptom for those of you that might try to help me or have any idea on this. I was just pinging my roommates computer as well as another computer on campus that is in a different residence hall. I was somehow getting a large number of negative response times. I am posting a print screen of this to show you that I actually did get negative response times. I covered up the ip address that I was pinging and the file path that the command prompt starts in but left the rest of the pic unchanged.

So anyone have any ideas on this one now?

Attached Thumbnails

 

Well after a bit more searching around the web I found my solution. The negative ping times are caused by a timing bug in AMD X2's where the timing on the two cores gets off a little bit so that one core is slightly ahead of the other core on the internal timer. All it requires to fix this is the installation of AMD's dual core drivers and optimizer. Did that and now I have not had any problems since.

67_GTO you have rep on the way for trying to help me out and giving me some places to start, thank you.

Thats interesting, I never would've connected your problem to your CPU in a million years.