ASUS A8N-SLI premium onboard LAN problems

[LxMxFxD3]

OK so I'm running the config you see in my sig. Here is my issue:

NV LAN corrupts data - If I download a big file the installer will crash. Happens without fail on any file I download. Surfing the web seems ok though.

Marvell Yukon - Doesn't corrupt data but drops connection every few hours and only way to get it back is to reboot. Very annoying.

I tried installing my one of my old PCI NIC cards but I get the blue screen of death.

Drivers:

Windows XP pro all the latest updates
Marvel Yukon latest driver from 8/23/05 from their website
NV4 latest drivers from nvidia.com

BIOS: 1007

Someone help, I need working internet!

PS the connections are at 100Mbit from a linksys router that has worked for years.

Thanks.

 

[LxMxFxD3]

TTT

 

[wanderer27]

First, I only have one of the LAN Ports activated on mine, I've heard the Yukon can be flaky (maybe okay with newest Drivers).

I installed the NVidia 6.65 Drivers - omit the IDE portion.

The last thing is that the LAN Port connector on the MB can be a little picky. You'll be using the bottom LAN connector, next to where the Sound cables plug in.

What you'll need to do is plug and unplug the LAN cable into this port. Observe that you want the RJ45 Connect to light up. Once you get it seated correctly things should work fine as long as you're pulling on the cable or anything

Hope this helps.

 

[Peter]

The NVidia firewall software has been found to corrupt FTP traffic. I don't know whether a fix is available already.

 

[akugami]

DO NOT use nVidia's active armor or firewall software.

 

[LxMxFxD3]

Originally posted by: akugami
DO NOT use nVidia's active armor or firewall software.

Hmm, I did install it but I have it turned off. Could this still be my problem??

 

[wanderer27]

Personally, I would remove them. I recall seeing people having issues with them, but I can't remember right off what they were.

 

[Superguy]

I had issues with data corruption when using the firewall. I went back to ZoneAlarm.

 

[welfarebum]

I have the EXACT same problem, and it has been driving me crazy. I bought a whole new system last week and put it together. It includes the ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Motherboard, Athlon X2 3800, and 6600 GT video card. I'm using BIOS 007 and 6.66 nVidia drivers.

I very carefully installed windows, SP2, nVidia drivers, applications and, voila... the blue screen of death and freezing. WFT? So I reformatted the disk and started again, this time using Acronis True Image to save a mirror of C every step of the way so that I could revert back to previous mirrors.

First I found that installing the nVidia audio driver caused major instability problems. Not installing this driver - and only the nVidia SMBus, Ethernet, and IDE drivers - seemed to result in a stable system.

But then, a few hours later, I found that when downloading big zip files from snapfiles.com, I would consistently get corrupted data. But surfing was okay. What was going on?

So I tried shutting off "ActiveArmor" in the firewall and suddenly I could download files successfully - or so I thought. Three happy hours later into the install, I downloaded a file and found it was corrupted! What the halibut? This problem is evil because, although you think you've got it beat, it suddenly appears out of nowhere.

II then turned off the nVidia firewall altogether and... Blue Screen of Death and spontaneous reboots! Actually it just did it again as I am typing this on my old computer!

So here I sit with a $2,000 pile of hardware that can't reliably connect to the internet and spontaneously crashes. Nice job Asus + nVidia.

I bought this Asus motherboard, in part, because of the hardware firewall and promise of reducing CPU firewall usage. I bought the "premium" board because I want the best, not some POS!

So what do I do? And, just as importantly, how do I do it? I need to get this new system up and running reliably.

Robert aka Welfarebum.

 

[wanderer27]

Recommendations.

Do a clean install of XP. Install NVidia 6.65 drivers - not the IDE or Firewall crap. Disable whichever LAN you're not using - I use the NV LAN as I've heard there are possible Driver issues with the Marvel Yukon LAN.

I would say to disable your XP Firewall if you're behind a Hardware or other Firewall. I've also heard of people having issues with that (thanks alot MS).

 

[welfarebum]

Thanks,

Since I'm no expert, I have a couple questions... In addition to the nVidia audio drivers, which I didn't install, I see only 3 other nVidia drivers (either 6.66, 6.65, or whatever). They are: SMBus, Ethernet, and IDE driver. What do each of these drivers do - and aren't they required?

I can't connect to the internet until the Ethernet driver is installed. And isn't this driver running the nVidia firewall/FTP/etc crap that corrupts my downloaded data? Can I install the Ethernet driver and not the firewall, getting rid of the instability?

And what are the SMBus and IDE drivers for? If my SATA drivers already work, why do I need to install these drivers?

Robert.

 

[wanderer27]

The primary difference between the 6.65 and 6.66 is that the 6.66 supports Windows 2003/Server, you really don't need that so I'd just go with the 6.65s.

Okay, install the SMBus Drivers, and the Ethernet Drivers. It will ask if you want to install the Firewall and something else, just say no to this.

The IDE Drivers may or may not be okay, but the Windows IDE Drivers work fine, so you don't really need them. Your SATA Drives will work fine, they're set up in another menu if you ever need to mess with them, I never did.

The SMBus is for like inter-chip signalling/communication, so you will need these.

In BIOS, you'll want to disable the Marvel/Yukon LAN, and I disables the LAN ROM Boot option on both as well.

The Audio drivers are only for the the Onboard Sound. If you're going to use Onboard Sound I'd download the newest Drivers for that from the ASUS Site.

You don't need the Silicon SATA/RAID or the NVRAID Drivers unless you're going to run your Hard Drives in RAID configuration. I actually had some problems when I erroneously installed these, but there may have been other issues involved in that as well.

 

[welfarebum]

Thanks for the advice! I'm going to restore windows to the image just prior to installing the nVidia drivers (thank goodness for Acronis True Image which I consider to be the best software tool I own). Then I'm going to follow your instructions to the letter to see if I can get this POS working reliably.

I guess this is the price for buying leading edge hardware. I've put together several PCs over the years, but this A8N-SLI Premium based system has definitely been the most challenging and frustrating. As we all know, it can literally take days and days of work to install all the drivers, applications, upgrades, etc. After all that work, it's a nightmare to suddenly discover that your system is corrupting file downloads and blue screening! Yesterday, I had visions of heaving the entire system through the front window of the place where I bought it! ;-)

I'll let you know how it goes.

Robert.

 

[akugami]

Don't use the 6.66's they have issues with the Asus boards. Basically do as the other guys say and install without nVidia's active armor or firewall software. I'd make an image of this pristine install in case something fubars on you later. Then start adding all your normal apps and stuff and hopefully everything goes good.

 

[wanderer27]

I had a couple other thoughts last night on this.

In the "Onboard Device Configuration" menu you may want to look at a few things.

If you're not using RAID, then I'd disable both the Onboard RAID controllers. The first is the NVRAID (sub-menu), the other's a little trickier, it's just called Silicon SATA Controller and doesnt' say anything about RAID. Your actual SATA control is under the IDE Function menu, it should be fine as is.

If you're not planning on using any of the other Devices in this Menu (Onboard Device Configuration), I'd go ahead and disable them, to free up resources. Right off hand, I think the NV LAN may be the only thing I have turned on here.

The RAID controllers are my only real concern here. If you're not using them they may try to pull some Drivers you don't really need.

I may have another idea if you still have issues after all this, hopefully you won't

 

[welfarebum]

Just to confirm, are you saying not to install the active armor or firewall no matter what rev of the driver I use? So even if I use 6.65 or the earlier version included on the installation CD, I still can't use the hardware firewall?

Robert.

 

[wanderer27]

Correct, there are still some issues with the Firewall from what I'm hearing. I'm not sure if it's a Driver, BIOS, or Hardware issue.

You can always try it after we get your LAN working correctly if your daring I suggest we see if can get things stable first. It's not a big deal to go back an enable/install additional items at a later time.

 

[welfarebum]

Okay, I followed the advice of wanderer27 in the 09/20/2005 09:17 PM post...

It appears (I'll have to do more testing) that my system is not only stable but is downloading files without corrupting them. This is great news! But it basically means that I bought a motherboard with a hardware firewall that is wonderful and amazing except for one small issue... the freakin thing can't be enabled or it will crash your system. So what's the point of selling a board with this useless hardware? Is anyone out there actually using it successfully?

Now I've still got a ways to go and have a few more issues that need resolution.

There seems to be several CPU overclocking and related drivers and utilities. There is:

1. Cool&Quiet driver.
2. Ai Booster utility.
3. Ai NOS.
4. nTune utility.
5. PC Probe utility
6. Precision Tweaker

So what utilities and drivers should I install if I want to overclock based on CPU load? They seem to have overlapping functions. How does "cool&quiet" relate to "Ai Booster" and "Ai NOS" and "nTune"?

Robert.

 

[ShoNuff]

I have the premium board and I am currently using the old driver nForce 6.53 drivers w/ out any problems. I am tempted to upgrade but currently running my X2 @ 2800 prime and super-pi stable.

OK here is my contribution to this thread. For those of you that still have a problem some reported success with the "new" 6.67 XP SP2 32-bit drivers posted on Guru3d. When you follow the link you will notice new ethernet drivers. If using the 6.65's does not solve your problems you may want to try these.

Note, they are WHQL certified as well.

 

[welfarebum]

I installed the 6.67 drivers, tried a download from snapfiles.com, and got a "The source file is corrupted" error again. So 6.67 doesn't solve my problem. Again, the nForce crap corrupts downloaded data. If anyone has a solution to this problem, please post it here!

Using Acronis True Image, I restalled my system back to were it was. I'm using the PC-Cillin firewall.

Robert.

 

[Pl0p]

I had a working system for a couple of hours. Everything was installed from the CD that came with the mobo, just to make sure I took those drivers: these are the ones used by asus themself before before production, so they had to work. They worked untill I re-installed everything 32 bit instead of 64... Sorry don't know the versions of the softs.


My first install is always stock with the soft from the cd's. Next is tuning by updating drivers and stuff: it was the 6.66 from nvidia that corrupted my first install, which i don't mind for re-installing, but i was stupid enough to re-install after changing some bios settings The first install and tune is mainly to get correct bios settings before the "true" install.

 

[RoosterKooster]

I installed the 6.66 drivers - have NEVER [knowingly] installed or used the NVidia firewall. The firewall has never presented itself as a device, service or whatever.

My NVidia interface began experiencing the corrupted downloads and corrupted file copies - any data going through that onboard ethernet interface being written to disk could be (and probably WAS) corrupt.

I installed the 6.66 drivers when i went to bios v1006 as Assus had instructed - citing board damage if one did not upgrade the drivers PRIOR to flashing bios v1006 or newer. You folks suggesting going back to 6.65 are either ignoring this requirement or have found that Assus is so f.o.s. that anything they say can be considered BS. What is it?

Again, I never installed; never inabled the NVidia firewall but not too long after the 6.66 drivers were installed the NVidia interface could not be relied upon to correctly copy or download a file.

The Marvel Yukon interface has been working without a problem. I did download the latest marvel driver v8.39.3.3 dated 8/23/2005.

(C)Copyright 2002-2005 Marvell(R).
All rights reserved.
==============================================
yk50x86.txt created 23-Aug-2005
Readme File for YK50X86.sys v8.39.3.3
Marvell Yukon Ethernet Controller
NDIS5 Miniport Driver for Windows 2000 (x86)
==============================================

So, you guys reverting to 6.65 or older, did you go back to bios 1005 or older?
I think Assus is screwing us and should recall this crap!
1) VCore - screwed
2) NVidia ethernet interface - screwed
3) NVidia chipset drivers - screwed
4) Chipset driver / bios compatibility - screwed

This is supposed to be a premium board but it behaves rather like a super economy board - half-assed.

 

[RoosterKooster]

With bios v1007, the onboard lan rom was updated. ( from asus bios 1007 info: 2. Update nVidia onboard Lan PXE ROM to V215.0503)

Could this be the culprit causing corruption?

 

[Capt Caveman]

FWIW - I had issues also when upgrading from 6.65 to 6.66 but read a thread about the new Nvidia drivers about needing to completely uninstall the Nvidia drivers using Driver Cleaner Pro. I uninstalled everything from the Control Panel, used Driver Cleaner Pro to make sure everything was gone, installed the 6.66 drivers. No problems with anything, not including the ActiveArmor/Firewall.

Driver Cleaner Pro Download

 

[RoosterKooster]

Thanks for the information about Driver Cleaner Pro. I'll try that and see if my NVidia interface works correctly.