Motherboard NIC dying?

[Denis W. Veteran]

Since the past few weeks I've noticed my desktop randomly dropping the Internet connection - yellow exclamation mark on the Network tray icon. Initially I thought it to be the fault of the POS modem/router combo from my ISP but I replaced that with a newer box yet the dropouts continued. Then I isolated the problem down to the immediate router connecting my desktop and Raspberry Pi.

Anyways long story short, I think there's something wrong with my desktop's onboard NIC. It's an almost 7 year old GA-P35C-DS3R motherboard. I suspect this is the case as my RPi is still connected and I can SSH into it from my wireless devices. Strangely while I can ping the RPi from the desktop, I can't do anything much beyond that.

I tried changing ethernet ports, and cables to see who's responsible. Matter of fact while I'm writing this post from my iPad, on my desktop the connection is down again. So it's definitely not the router (a E900, which frankly sucks but it usually gets the job done).

Anyone else had this happen to them? I'm going to keep a script running overnight on the RPi, pinging one of the dummy domains used by iOS to check network connectivity, to ensure this is not a problem with the router. In the meantime I'm thinking of grabbing a cheap NIC card to get around this problem.

[spaceelf]

Yes, I've had the onboard NIC die (intermittent as you say or completely on other systems) several times in the last ten years or so.  These days I'm always ready to get a NIC and put it in there.

[Praetor]

Since the past few weeks I've noticed my desktop randomly dropping the Internet connection - yellow exclamation mark on the Network tray icon. Initially I thought it to be the fault of the POS modem/router combo from my ISP but I replaced that with a newer box yet the dropouts continued. Then I isolated the problem down to the immediate router connecting my desktop and Raspberry Pi.

Anyways long story short, I think there's something wrong with my desktop's onboard NIC. It's an almost 7 year old GA-P35C-DS3R motherboard. I suspect this is the case as my RPi is still connected and I can SSH into it from my wireless devices. I tried changing ethernet ports, and cables to see who's responsible. Matter of fact while I'm writing this post from my iPad, on my desktop the connection is down again. So it's definitely not the router (a E900, which frankly sucks but it usually gets the job done).

Anyone else had this happen to them? I'm going to keep a script running overnight on the RPi, pinging one of the dummy domains used by iOS to check network connectivity, to ensure this is not a problem with the router. In the meantime I'm thinking of grabbing a cheap NIC card to get around this problem.

 

try using a spare NIC to isolate the problem; if with a different NIC the problem isn't there then it's definitly a problem with your onboard NIC. Also check for drivers / firmware, is any, for the NIC.

[Roger H. Veteran]

Have you tried booting a live CD (Ubuntu or something) to see if it still happens there?

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

I had a similar issue at the start of the year too, my on-board NIC would work until I started to copy a file across the network or download something, then it would just constantly start disconnecting and re connecting.
 
After trying a different cat5e cable, connecting to a different switch and updating the drivers i still had the same issue. I ended up getiing a TP-Link TG-3468 NIC and have not had any issues since.

The TP-Link TG-3468 is fantastic and was only ?6, Windows has drivers for it out the box and I can get 93MB/s copying files across my home network.
 

[spaceelf]

The TP-Link TG-3468 is fantastic and was only ?6, Windows has drivers for it out the box and I can get 93MB/s copying files across my home network.

90% of NICs do the exact same thing unless you're running a server off it heh :)

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

90% of NICs do the exact same thing unless you're running a server off it heh :)

 

Indeed! the point I was making is you don't need to buy an expensive NIC to put in your desktop pc  :)

[Praetor]

Never had a NIC die on me but other components certainly did.After 7 years you should expect other things to start falling apart so I suggest you look at upgrading the lot

 

Never had issues with Intel NICs :p

 

i've had some NIC die on me, but then again the brands are gone by now so those NICs were crap anyway.

 

Intel NICs are the great, indeed; the server class ones are very good :)

[+BudMan MVC]

"It's an almost 7 year old GA-P35C-DS3R motherboard."

While you could through in a nic, as discussed they are not very expensive - for home use pretty much anything will work. Even when gig was new I picked up cards for $30, now sure you can find them for under 10$ that will get the job done..

But with 7 year old MB -- might be time take the money you would spend on a nic and put into a new MB ;)

[Denis W. Veteran]

Heh cheers guys. Unfortunately I don't have a spare NIC on me - well I probably do from literally 9 years ago but it's misplaced somewhere or given away. Plus it's not a gigabit card.

I found cards for around $10 at the local computer shop so will pick that up in a bit before work. As for replacing the mobo/CPU/RAM combo - it's something I've thought about before but I'll wait until more things die before I do that. I'm not on my desktop that often anymore these days other than to game ;)

edit: since I won't have an opportunity to install this until tonight, I thought to grab the card for now, then tonight I can try updating drivers and booting off a LiveCD before going ahead with the card install.