Hi there, I’ve been poking around the site and I’ve seen related posts about this, but no real solutions yet, figured I’d post my query about this and see if someone can help…
I have a lab of 17 Dell Precisions, and 1 Dell Poweredge 2900. The workstations are running WinXP Pro all patched and with the latest drivers. The server is running Server 2003, patched and good. The network runs my own private Active Directory domain.
All the machines have a static IP address given to me by the IT department, defined by MAC address.
There are two more labs connected to the same switches, running MAC OSX. These labs do not have the problem.
The problem began in February of 2007. Seemingly if a machine is left on for about 6~8 hours (doesn’t matter if it is idle or being heavily used; doesn’t matter if it is logged in or not logged in) the machine will spontaneously lose network connection, and will not see the internet. It will, however, still see the server if the user has a drive mapped.
Repairing the connection does not work. Re-inserting the ethernet plug does not work. Restarting the machine (not power cycling) does not work. Only Power Cycling the machine works to restore the connection.
Curiously, when the server loses connection, restarting (no power cycle) fixes the problem. I do not have to powercycle the server, only the workstations. When the server loses its connection, its connection to the AD Domain also fails. The restart fixes this too. As mentioned above, however, machines attached to the server via a mapped network drive can still access the server.
When the network connection goes out, there is no indication that the network has lost connectivity. The network icon indicator says the ethernet is connected at 1Gbps.
The wiring is all brand new and tested. The NICS are all brand new. All the machines exhibit this problem. The lab worked fine from Sept 2006 to feb 2007.
No software has been added or deleted from the machines since Sept 2006, save for Microsoft Patches through update.microsoft.com.
The workstations exhibit this problem regardless of whether they are logged into the AD Domain or logged in as a local administrator.
There is antivirus software, MCaffee 8.5, updated and the settings are set to a moderate level. Microsoft firewall is running.
I have another PC lab running all the same software on similar spec machines in a different location (connected to the same IT infrastructure) that does NOT exhibit ANY of these problems.
When the machines lose connection, ipconfig shows the IP addresses and DNS servers (i.e. – does not show 0.0.0.0, its shows the #’s its supposed to); pinging an IP locally and to the internet fail.
Hibernation mode is deactivated.
Power save mode on the NIC is disabled.
Once rebooted, it works for another 6~8 hours.
I appreciate any help.
Thanks much!!
