Massive data errors on Epox 9NDA3+ Gb NIC

[Astral Abyss]

Hi folks,

Last night I finished building my brothers computer and set about the task of reinstalling XP. Well, I forgot his CD didn't have SP1 on it (it was late and I probably should've just called it a night since this was a dumb oversight) and I tried to install the Nvidia chipset drivers without SP1. Well, after I realized I screwed the pooch by not having SP1 installed, I installed SP1 and reinstalled the nforce drivers.

What's happening is that I get massive data errors on the onboard gigabit NIC. The motherboard is an Epox 9NDA3+ with 3200+ 90nm A64. I've got an IP address assigned to the computer by DHCP on the DSL router. I can ping myself, the router, and can get to the internet but it's getting so many data errors that it just keeps hanging up while loading pages.

I'm at work right now, but I figure the best thing to do first is to try to uninstall the nforce drivers, run Driver Cleaner, and try reinstalling from a clean slate. If this doesn't work does anyone have some suggestions? Anything special I need to set on the nforce network config to correct this? I haven't used it before. I'm really hoping that the NIC isn't jacked up, but I haven't seen issues like this before so I'm kind of leaning towards that being the problem.

I tried a different cable on a differnt port on the router and tried the same port connected to the NIC on his laptop, which worked fine on the laptop. Tried rebooting the router and checked its settings. Everything looked fine, but no go.

Thanks for any help guys.

 

[valve1138]

Maybe try turning off auto detection and hard etting to 10 megs half duplex. If it doesn't work then I would say the NIC is funky.

 

[Astral Abyss]

Hmmm, yeah I did try forcing 100Mbps full duplex but that didn't help. I'll try your suggestion and bump it down even more to see if that changes the situation.

 

[Darkstar850]

is this a new or previously used cable?

 

[Astral Abyss]

Both cables have been previously used. Both are CAT5e. Fairly short... about 10 feet.

 

[Darkstar850]

Ok, I re-read the last part of your first post. That really sounds like a bad NIC.
How are you checking for errors on your connection?

 

[Astral Abyss]

I was looking at the status page on the router and noticed them. Also, the errors appear in the nvidia software that installs with nforce unified driver.

Hmmm, yeah I'm kinda thinking it's a bad NIC, but I'm still holding out some hope. Almost everything my brother is getting for Christmas is or has gone into this new computer I built and if I have to send the motherboard back it could be a couple weeks before it gets rebuilt again.... bummer. Well, at least I warned him of the possibility.

 

[Astral Abyss]

Update:

Pretty sure the NIC is bad. Reinstalling Windows didn't fix the problem. Same problem. Can't even transfer data via crossover cable between this computer and another.