[stranglehold]

I recently moved a small network and I am having trouble with one of the pc's.

Previously we had a 10/100 hub. Now I am using a d-link switch in it's place. This is the only change in the hardware.

Bottom line now is that I have one pc that will not connect to the switch. The light on the port does not even light up when I connect the pc. I have tried two different cables. Cable length is about 30'.

Right now I have 3 other pc's connected together and working fine. Including our NT 4.0 server. Remaining pc's are Win98.

The thing that gets me is, I have the NT server and the problem pc on the same desk side-by-side. So I have confirmed that the two cables and ports I tried with the pc work with the server. This eliminates the cables and makes me suspect the configuration of the pc. HOWEVER, when I connect the pc and the server together directly with a x-over cable, they communicate just fine.
So this should prove that the configuration of the pc is ok. For this reason, I have not yet unloaded and reloaded the networking software on the pc.

Anybody have any ideas or a good explanation for me?

 

[bsop]

You will have to use the process of illimination to figure this one out.

The computer that does not connect and you have tried 2 other cables, Plug that port of the hub into the other computers and see if the lights light up. The port must be identified as working first.

If the port lights up with the other computers, which is likely, then the NIC went bad in the one computer.

Look in the end and see if one of the pins got smashed down accidently or that something did not get inside and prevent the RJ 45 from securely snaping all the way in.

This is not a network issue. This is a hardware issue. Until you get the lights to light up, this is purely a hardware issue. It would seem that the patch cords are good but you never know.

I would try this order,
Make sure the port is good on another computer,
Make sure the cable is good from another computer,
then if it still doesn't work, you know the NIC went bad.
It does not have to have the drivers installed if it is a PCI card.
It will light up regardless of drivers being installed or not.
If it is a USB nic, the drivers must be installed and the card must be working correctly or the port on the hub will not light up.

 

[jtatsud]

One other thing you might try...

Switches are "smarter" than hubs and support full duplex. However, on some NIC cards, this does not work properly. Your switch and your NIC card are probably both set to autosense so I they are likely trying to communicate at 100 mebabits full duplex. You can go into your NIC card settings to change this to 100 megabit half duplex. To do this:

Open your Network folder. Highlight the NIC card and click on Properties. Click on the Advanced tab. Under the Advanced tab, you should see a setting called Media Type or Connection Type. Choose the 100 megabit setting that is NOT full duplex. Exit the panel and reboot.

Hope this helps

 

[stranglehold]

jtatsud, Well that almost worked.

Settings were set to hardware default. I changed the setting to half duplex and it did not work with the switch. I subsituted a hub for the switch and the port light lit up which never happened on the switch. However, I was not able to get a connection.

I changed the settings to automatic and it is now working with the hub. We are now active, so I will not be able to test the switch untill tomorrow. But maybe changing from hardware default to automatic will allow the nic to communicate with the switch.

Thanks.

 

[Lethalpill50]

im not sure if this helps at all but if a switch isn't compatible with an OS, would the activity light come on. i recently had a problem with a wireless router and PCMCIA reciever that wasn't compatible with the OS the laptop was running. i looked on the receiver and noticed there was no activity/connectivy light displaying. then once i upgraded from 98 to XP, it lit up like a christmas tree (stupid joke) and was successful. most anything that's coming out now doesn't include win98 anymore.