Network issues

[Necronic]

I am having some network issues with something at work, and am trying to troubleshoot it myself, as the people responsible for fixing it may take upwards of 2-3 months to do so (seriously, it has taken them more than 2 months to install software on 1 computer).

Here's the setup. My computer is logged on to a local lan and has another connection that connects directly to a piece of equipment. The connection to the equipment has died recently, and I can't get it back on. Done the obvious stuff that I can, reboot, replug, disable the other network connection and replug.

So far nothing has really worked. I am limited as to what I can do since its at work, and because the second network card is configured in a special way (communicates through a crossover cable for 1).

I have been pinging it from the commmand line and I usual just time out, but every once in a whle I get "hardware error" as the response. From what I have read this means that either the cable isn't plugged in right or the "NIC" is going bad. This would actually follow some of the other issues I have seen recently like difficulty with uploading data to the server through the other lan connection.

Anyways, does anyone have a better understanding of the NIC and could give me some simple things to check to see if I can fix my computer (or diagnose the issue.) Also, I am seriously limited on what I can do, but still offer suggestions.

 

[sixpackshaker]

Is the nic that is failing built in or an expansion card?

Trace your cable. Be sure it is not wrapped around something or does not have a kink in it. Pull the cable out and look at the end of the jack. Are the wires flush with the base of the jack? And check to see if any have pulled away from the blade that cuts through the insulation.

 

[Necronic]

It is an expansion card. If its the NIC on the computer side, that's not a huge deal, possibly I can replace that myself (not sure what my access level is), but if its the NIC on the system its connected to....I'm boned. The cabling was very poorly done, so there were pinches on the wire. I am going to double check with the manufacturer to make sure its not some exotic pinning on the crossover cable, if not I will stop by a computer store later tonight and buy a new one and try that out.

Question. If the problem is the PC side NIC/expansion card, would I get the hardware error when I ping the card itself? Right now I have been pinging the equipment on the other end of it.

 

[sixpackshaker]

also check the card itself for burst caps.

find some one to pin out the cable for you.

 

[Chibibar]

If you think it is your machine, you could get a USB nic for you machine and see what happen. you should be able to plug in a USB NIC on your machine and see if that resolve the issue (sounds like you have 2 nic on your machine and 2 on the equipment)

If you are still getting errors, I'm guessing it is the NIC on the equipment. Is it under warranty? do you have access to it? If you do, you might want to use that USB NIC to see if it works on it (assuming you have admin rights to that equipment)

 

[Necronic]

oooph.

So I got the system back to where it was flipping itself off and on again (which it only does a couple times before it stops) and started pinging the network card and the external equipment as fast as I could (only get like 30 seconds), GC no go, mostly gave me timeouts, a couple "hardware errors", but I was able to get responses from the PC's network card, which makes me worried that the issue is on the external machine.

I would love to be able to just hook up another computer and see if I can ping it, but there are only a handful of systems around here I have admin access to and I would need that to change the computers subnet mask (I think).

Still think this is all black magic.

 

[PatrThom]

Try pinging 127.0.0.1 for a while. If you still get errors, then it's your software stack that is bad (leftover firewall bits, that sort of thing).

--Patrick

 

[Necronic]

will the NIC need to be active to test that properly? Its pretty hard to get it in that state since the only connection I can bring up on it is to the GC/external equipment, and that connections flickers and dies really fast.