network card dead...or is it?

[asciiker]

hey all
i've been a regular reader of this forum for three years now...excellent stuff people! really don't know why i didn't register before

anyway...i've recently encountered a strange network card problem

two days back, the power dips, windows (xp pro) reboots and restarts...this has happened millions of times over my years of use of computers...and things have died occasionally. on bootup, i notice my network not working. so in device manager, it shows my d-link 528ct adapter (10mbps, running a three pc coaxial network) as "unable to start...code 10 error" or something like that.

i uninstall it and have windows redect it...no go, same problem...

i swap slots (tried four different ones...each time uninstalling from device manager before shutting down)...no go, same problem

i swap in my brother's known, working IDENTICAL network card...no go

i go to safe mode, meticulously edit the registry and remove some ghost instances of the card...reboot, have it redetect...no go...i swap my card back in

i boot knoppix...and it works!!! i go back to windows, no go...?!?!!?

i do a windows repair install...no go

last night, i backed up my ntfs system partition, formatted (it needed a format because it was a converted ntfs drive) and reinstalled (with the network card physically removed) thinking maybe it was one of those stubborn windows things (the install is wonderful now)...no go...code 10 device cannot start...

i swap my brothers card back in again...and it works now!

i swap my original card back...no go in windows...i boot knoppix, and my card works?!?!

so i know there is something wrong with the card and i will replace it by tomorrow...but it works just fine in knoppix...and makes my motherboard unstable during bootup...what gives? anyone else experienced something like this?

[NooNoo]

Well then Welcome asciiker to Windrivers

Code 10 with XP is usually about acpi and system resources.

In order to work out what is likely to be the problem, need to know your motherboard make and model please, and what other pci cards you have in the motherboard.

[asciiker]

Well then Welcome asciiker to Windrivers

Code 10 with XP is usually about acpi and system resources.

In order to work out what is likely to be the problem, need to know your motherboard make and model please, and what other pci cards you have in the motherboard.

true...and to make sure, i did change slots and i also reset the "configuration data" option in the BIOS somewhere during my "debugging"...forgot to mention that in my initial post

however, my brother's network card, which is COMPLETELY IDENTICAL (except for the MAC address obviously) works just fine in my machine in windows xp. moreover, my own card WAS WORKING just fine for the past six months in my new motherboard (see specs below) as well as for two years in my old motherboard (Asus A7V)...same slot, same windows (yes, i was lame and did a repair install when i switched motherboards six months ago)...code 10 problem only started after the power dip

the puzzling part is why only knoppix is able to run it and windows craps out on it

anyhoo...windows is installed fine and part of the reason why i really like the new install is because xp has placed each device on its own irq (more or less...there is still some sharing)...no more SHAMELESS assignment of four or five devices to irq9 or irq11 which windows 2000/xp LOVE to do...heck this network card was working on irq9 in my previous windows installation, shared with my video card and my sblive as well (in the case of the A7V...no longer using the sblive).

the specs, if you're still interested, are:
Athlon XP Barton 2500+ (overclocked to 3200+ for last six months)
MSI K7N2-Delta ILSR Motherboard (nForce 2 Ultra, builtin SATA RAID, firewire, USB2.0, 5.1 channel sound, 100Mbps network)
512MB (256MBx2)
Asus Geforce2 MX400 32MB
Quantum Fireball Plus LM 20GB 2MB buffer 7200rpm
Sony 48X CD ROM
Asus 8x DVD ROM
Viewsonic 17" E70
Compaq USB Keyboard
A4Tech PS/2 Wheeled Optical Mouse
Floppy, Casing, 300Watt VERY FLAKY Power Supply

the network card (dlink 528ct) was the only pci card in the system (although some of the builtin stuff qualifies as pci)

...will be changing the power supply as well after this incident. also note that i did NOT overclock my processor during all this "debugging". and why am i not using the builtin network on my motherboard? because it is cat-5 RJ45 and my home network is 10Mbps coaxial...old and lame but i'm not investing in a switch and new cabling yet...i'm just a student

[Vette]

Have you tried re-download the drivers for that nic card from Dlinks website? I had situations where when allowing the computer to detect a device and the device doesn't work or work correctly, the core drivers in Windows were corrupt. Try downloading the new set of drivers to a folder on your desktop ( which also may contain several updates ) then removing the existing drivers in control panel / system / hardware / device manager, then rebooting the computer and when Windows finds the nic card, see if it will let you install new dirvers from disk if it doesn't, try updating to the new drivers in device manager. After your finished installing, reboot again. Try this website to get the newest driver http://support.dlink.com/products/vi...tid=DE%2D528CT

[NooNoo]

Other thing that occurred to me is that this happened during a power dip. This may well have caused the bios to reset to its default values... this in turn may have caused setting for apm and acpi to change which would cause this problem.

Windows of all varieties rarely handles this well...
Knoppix ( I believe) does not attempt to control the bios in the way that windows does... hence it just believes it and it works.

[tableist]

Other thing that occurred to me is that this happened during a power dip. This may well have caused the bios to reset to its default values... this in turn may have caused setting for apm and acpi to change which would cause this problem.

Windows of all varieties rarely handles this well...
Knoppix ( I believe) does not attempt to control the bios in the way that windows does... hence it just believes it and it works.

I am having the same problem... power dip, d-link wireless card now is saying "device cannot start. (code 10)" If anyone has found a solution to this problem please reply or send me an email.

[Estrudios]

I am having the same problem... power dip, d-link wireless card now is saying "device cannot start. (code 10)" If anyone has found a solution to this problem please reply or send me an email.

Having spent a frustrating morning battling against code 10, I took a bit of a stab in the dark and it seemed to solve the problem. So I'll post it and hope it helps someone somewhere.

D-link's support, by the way, is laughable.

Problem: I've had a D-link DWL 510 wireless networking card in a Dell GX150 for about a year. A bit of trouble to install, but once it's working it's a great card - dropped just one connection all year. But the time came to re-install windows, and with it, the card just seemed to disappear. Loading the D-link drivers did nothing (and the D-link utility wouldn't even load) and when I forced Windows to install them through device manager, I was told "device cannot start". Strange, having worked fine all year.

So I uninstalled drivers, took card out, re-installed drivers, put card back in, and apparently windows should detect new hardware. But it didn't - and I still got the code 10 when I forced it to install.

Apparently it's something to do with IRQ conflicts, and a lack of system resources. There should be plenty of system resources so this was a surprise to me, but anyway I went into device manager and saw some unidentified network device which I thought might be upsetting it: I uninstalled that. Then I rebooted and went into the BIOS.

One of the options is to change IRQ addresses. There were about 5 devices listed - including the wireless card - and they were sharing 3 address (9, 10, and 11). I randomly shuffled them about, ensuring that the wireless card was sharing an address with some little used device like the ethernet card.

Rebooted and Bob's your uncle - everything present and correct.

[Rogue1987]

Just a suggestion, you may want to get a new power supply (like a 400 watt).
It won't help fix your nic problem, but you won't have to put up with problems from it anymore.