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Networking? PC Problem

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by cmhjon

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This is a follow up to another Q I had posted earlier.

Recently I bought 4 new HP Vectra VLi8 PC's. They came with a PIII 550. The reseller had to install the hard drive (IBM 7200rpm 20GB IDE,) 128MB RAM (unknown manufacturer PC100 SDRAM chip -though the box calls for PC133 SDRAM -- the PC100 seems to work ok) and a Creative Labs 52X IDE CD-ROM) because these boxes were basically a shell. Only the floppy drive, logic board, and power supply were installed. I specified Win98SE as the OS. I also had to add a 3COM 905C TX NIC. Since then, the problem is this...

About 45 minutes after a boot up, the box seems to "lose" it's network connection with our servers. Any attempt to access ANYTHING by ANY means on those servers causes the the program trying to access it to stop responding. **However I can still float the internet through our LAN connection.** I have tried running Windows update, updating any and all drivers, flashed the BIOS, reset the CMOS, tried different branded NICs (both Intel and 3COM) in different PCI slots...all the same result. All connections checked, all diagnostics run (even HP's own diags which failed the NIC test...I ran the same diags with other NICs...test failed). What am I missing here?!

3 replies

by ebob

(Welcome back)

I am reading through your Q a couple of times. Let me bounce back what I get from it:

All of these Vectras exhibit the same behaviour. That behaviour is that your local network applications "hang" after some period of time (45 minutes, give or take). But even with a local network application "hung", a user on the PC can still surf the Internet.

Which suggests that the network connection at the PC is not the problem.

It also suggests, to me, that the problem is not between the PCs and the switch or hub.

It strongly suggests to me that the issue is with your local network applications. Perhaps your user authentication process is dropping these users, or their PCs' MAC Addresses (for some as yet undiscovered reason).

Can you "ping" your application servers when everything is running OK? How about when the application hangs? From the server, can you ping the workstations when everything is running OK? And when the application hangs?

And, "we" are all assuming that you have other PCs on your network, and they are all running fine. Also assumed that these other PCs are connecting to the same applications as the Vectras. This way, you will know that the applicaiton is still running on the server.

by cmhjon

After exhausting enough time with this problem, I decided to wipe the drive and install Win98 (not SE) and go from there. So far, no further problems! Thank you for your time and efforts eBob, it was greatly appreciated! :-)

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