Problem with Gigabyte 7NF-RZ nForce 2 board

[Slick5150]

I built a system for a friend using the Gigabyte 7NF-RZ nForce2 board. I noticed in the device manager (after installing all the nforce drivers) that the LAN port wasn't listed. So I went into the bios to make sure the onboard LAN was enabled only to find out that there is no option for it.

In the manual, it shows a screenshot of the BIOS with an option for the onboard LAN listed with a * denoting that it's only available on 7NF-RZ. Well, that's what I have, and there's no option for it (and yes, there is a LAN port on the motherboard).

I tried downloading the latest bios and flashed it, still no option for LAN.

Anyone know what the deal is here? I'm rather confused why they would ship a motherboard with a LAN port on it, but no way to enable it in the bios.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[Slick5150]

Anybody? Anybody?

 

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

Have you tried installing the LAN drivers from the board's drivers disk?

 

[Slick5150]

It's not a driver issue. The LAN port doesn't exist as far as Windows is concerned (there's nothing in device manager showing up as unknown and there are no network devices)

 

[Doomer]

MoBo jumper maybe ?

 

[will889]

If your absolutely sure the lan is not in the bios you might want to just RMA the board. I would shoot an email to Gigabyte first and see if hey have seen that happen before. Surely it's not common because I have a friend with one and his lan works fine, and none of the comments at newegg mention lack of NIC not working.

 

[RockyIII]

I have same mobo. Get into the.... Set-up... Integrated Peripherals... ON-chip LAN [nVIDIA] AUTO... Should have loaded from nVIDIA on the mobo disc.

 

[dellis67]

I just wanted to add my 2 bits: I just installed one of these (Gigabyte 7NF-RZ Rev. 1.00 with F4 BIOS) and I'm having the same trouble. The Set-up -> Integrated Peripherals doesn't help, because the item doesn't show up. I do note that the lights on the plug light up when I plug in my cat-5 cable from my hub.
If anyone has anymore info, I would love to know.
David.

 

[SPECTRE184]

My mobo I have F3 bios, not sure of revision. Have to check when I get home from work. According to Giga's website the F4 bios is to be able to use AMD Sempron CPU's. Since I use an Athlon XP I didnt see need to upgrade bios to F4.

By default the bios is set to AUTO and like others said it should have been installed when chipset drivers were installed unless you unchecked box not to install it. In device manager it will show up as a Nvidia ethernet controller or something like that. It won't show up as a Realtek 8201. I did google search and haven't found drivers for 8201 chip, just 81xx series.

Or as last resort, RMA

 

[Cpaladin]

I have seen this same problem mentioned in the gigabyte mainboard usenet group, and I have this problem personally with a sempron 2600+ and F3 bios as well. From what I have observed, it seems that when using a sempron with this board the lan magically goes *poof* but not with an athlonxp. F4 bios only seems to add support for easy tune.

According to gigabyte's website:

www.giga-byte.com/Motherboard/Support/BIOS/BIOS_7NF-RZ.htm

It is the F3 bios, not the F4, that added support for sempron btw.

Anyway, I digress. The lan option is nowhere to be found in the bios, it doesn't show up as one of the assorted devices (usb controllers, audio, etc) during POST either. Installing drivers in windows is pointless because the darn thing is flat out not enabled, at all, so windows can't install drivers for a device that is hardware disabled.

While you're looking at things that are disabled, for which there are NO bios settings to enable, have you afflicted folks noticed that Primary Master Disk HDD S.M.A.R.T capability also listed as disabled. Can't enable it, the setting doesn't show up in the bios to enable it I tried an 80gb and a 200gb WD 8m "se" drive.

That aside, I got this from newegg for $48 shipped, I dropped in a kingston 10/100 nic I had floating around, and with some cheap AR (after rebate) centon ram from compusa, it works fine. The HD SMART deal isn't affecting performance, if a hard drive dies it dies anyway basically, and nics are free after rebate these days. When building a budget system, I'll take a system using an nforce 2 over some via k266 or k266a chipset any day.

Also, if anyone wants a cheap internal card reader, dealsonic dot com sells a cheap 8-in-1 unit from Justcom for $12 + shipping. You can hook it up using either a standard USB "external" type cable cable, or plug it into one of the two front usb pins (headers) on the mobo. I mention this because not all internal readers jive with all mobos, and that cheap justcom unit works with this board, just sharing the info.

Its an annoying problem, it'll probably get fixed in a future bios update, unfortunately this system is for someone 1500 miles away from me so I can't wait for them to fix it so long term I just dropped in a PCI nic, its a decent board otherwise. Don't know if I would buy it again until they fix these two issues, or show some attempt to anyway.

CP

 

[Cpaladin]

Just to add a little more, in case some folks with those board using an athlon xp think we're blind or stupid

If one looks at the manual:

america.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/FileList/Manual/manual_7nf-rz_e.pdf

Scroll down to page 25, and find where it lists usb keyboard support, usb mouse support, ac97 audio, and then beneath ac97 audio that is the option to set on-chip lan to auto or disabled.

On a system that is afflicted, and again this seems to be a sempron related issue, the bios screen looks like this:


USB Keyboard Support [Disabled]
USB Mouse Support [Disabled]
AC97 Audio [Enabled]
Onboard Serial Port 1 [Disabled]

There is no entry in the bios for disabling or enabling onboard lan. It should be located between the AC97 audio and onboard serial port device entries, but it isn't. I'll take a picture of the bios and put it on a webpage if I must, but I'm telling ya, its just not there.

 

[KLS UK]

have built three systems with this board using semprons and two showed the same symptoms. finally found that by removing the battery, clearing cmos and leaving powered down for 2 minutes did the trick, the lan option miraculously appeared.