On board LAN dead?

[brikis98]

First, the specs:

AMD A64 s939 3000+ (Venice) @ 2.6Ghz
MSI Neo4-F s939 mobo
2x512MB DDR400
ATI x800 XL
The on board LAN is connected via standard ethernet cable to a Linksys wireless G router

I was surfing the web last night and out of the blue, my internet stops working. It still shows me as connected, but nothing happens. I tried ipconfig release and renew, resetting the router, a different ethernet cable, etc. After some experimentation, I've narrowed it down as follows:

* it's not the router, because other people in my house are connected to it and they have no issues (and i tried plugging myself into a different router port)
* it's probably not software related: i tried rebooting, updated the drivers for the mobo, and tried using static IP's all with no success
* the most interesting thing: when I unplug the ethernet cable and plug it back in, if I open the "Local Area Connection Status" window, the "Activity" area shows 0 packets sent and 0 packets received. that is, it doesn't seem like my computer is even trying to establish a connection with the router!

So, just to check:

1. is it safe to assume my on board LAN is dead?
2. anyone ever had this kind of issue with this (or any other) mobo?

 

[brikis98]

hmm... now here's a twist... i got home from work today and it works just fine, at least for now...

could the on board LAN overheat or something? any other ideas?

 

[silentvois]

NF4 boards when overclocked are known to have some slight issues with onboard peripherals, especially the onboard LAN. I have a DFI NF4 Ultra-D that does the exact same thing, but only after 1 year of a conservative overclock with my x2 3800 to 2.4ghz. On hotter days it would happen significantly more and when under heavy load it would also happen more often. Usually I just go into network connections, disable the local area connection which is associated with the problematic onboard lan, then re-enable it after 10 secs and works again. Either that or a reset fixes it, however, it'll still reoccur from time to time...

If you wanna get rid of that issue, just install a cheap pci network card...