I teach an IT class where students make their own Cat5e cables and connect hand-me-down school computers to the network, reformat windows, and do various activities with them. One day, I went to setup another PC and plugged everything in (including the network cable) and started to install windows. Apparently, that caused issues with the school’s network so much so that they called in a contractor to help solve the issue; his solution – make a general announcement for anyone who connected something to the network to unplug it. When I did, the network was supposedly fine again. I took the same PC and cable home and hooked it to my router and everything worked fine. A couple of weeks later, I setup another PC in the room, hooked it to the network, and everything worked fine (even had the school’s technician check it out just in case). The next day after school, another general announcement was made. Just in case, I unplugged the new PC again but no one told me if that helped or not. Each time I used a different port but in the same box. Could it be a that the two ports are bad? If so, is there a way I can test it so I know for sure that the problem is there? Can a PC showing no symptoms cause the network to “crash”? The last time we had the issue caused some people to get very upset and I do not want to be the scapegoat b/c of one incident – any information you can give would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Mike
