If I use the network it crashes...

M76

[H]F Junkie
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Jun 12, 2012
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This is a problem that i was having intermittently for years. And today it came back again.
I'm beyond hopeless now.

What happens, is everything works fine, but as soon as I start loading down the network, all connections will drop on all networks on my server running windows 10 pro.

For example downloading from the internet. Or copying from the network drive will cause it to crash. And the only way to revive networking is to reboot windows. This only happens for traffic routed trough this server, which is internet traffic or the storage located on this server. Transfers between other computers on the network are unaffected.

When the crash happens it becomes impossible to reset network adapters as they are completely locked out at this point. If I right click on an adapter and select disable nothing happens. But if I reboot the computer it will start with that adapter disabled.

It works fine while I don't load down the network, for example only doing small transfers. But as soon as I start downloading large files from the internet or copying over the network it will crash within minutes.

It was working fine yesterday, now today it is happening again after months without issue. WTF?
 
overheating NIC maybe?
flaky drivers?

you have another NIC you can plug into the machine to test with?
 
Has it only ever happened on that one windows install? If so, you might plug a spare drive into that server, do a fresh install of windows 10 on there, and see if the problem still occurs.
 
NIC Driver and/or bad NIC. Update the driver and if it still crashes, Get a new NIC and try that. Intel.
 
bad nic or bad switch port or bad cable or bad drivers/nic firmware.
I have seen all of them cause it.
Most common was a bad motherboard nic.
Putting a intel pcie server nic in often solves the problem.
I would try new drivers, firmware then new cable and port on the switch then add a new nic if the rest don't solve it.
 
I didn't check back, because the error has gone away again. I didn't do anything. Be back in a few weeks or months I bet.
 
overheating NIC maybe?
flaky drivers?

you have another NIC you can plug into the machine to test with?
Tried installing new drivers, also tried different adapters.

Has it only ever happened on that one windows install? If so, you might plug a spare drive into that server, do a fresh install of windows 10 on there, and see if the problem still occurs.
No I re-installed windows in the exact hope of getting rid of the network adapter problems, but it didn't help. The whole thing is flaky is hell. I suspect it is a HW issue but one that goes deeper than the NIC, maybe the X79 chipset. The PC has multiple network interfaces and all break exactly at the same time. And when it happens I can't even disable or enable adapters from windows.

bad nic or bad switch port or bad cable or bad drivers/nic firmware.
I have seen all of them cause it.
Most common was a bad motherboard nic.
Putting a intel pcie server nic in often solves the problem.
I would try new drivers, firmware then new cable and port on the switch then add a new nic if the rest don't solve it.
I replaced all cables with brand new CAT6 ones, that didn't help either.

I guess the only way to permanently solve the issue is to throw out the entire MB, but that's a big investment I'm not willing to do for literally no gain. I'd have to spend at least $500 and loose performance in the process so until it breaks completely I have no choice.
 
While having the issue have you tried a winsock reset? Also, are you running any sort of av or antimalware products? Many of these have internal proxies that can puke while under load and leave little evidence. Try disabling those.
 
Have you tried a nic that's not part of the motherboard?
If not grab an intel nic for around 35 bucks and try it.
 
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