Re: [Hampshire] Linux miracle cure?

2009/6/2 James Ashburner <hantslug@???>:
> Hi all,
>
> We've had an unusual problem with a particular model laptop at work
> recently (HP 6710b). The network card stops working, though it still
> reports network cable as being plugged in and the lights flash away
> merrily. The card will not pick up an IP address through DHCP and will
> not communicate with a static IP assigned either.
>
> On the first of these, I booted PCLinuxOS to test whether the fault was
> hardware or software. Card works fine in Linux so I reboot to Windows
> and suddenly the card works there too. Now, it's not the reboot as that
> had already been tried and it's not coincidence because it's fixed the
> fault on two other laptops since. I'm certain using any flavour of Linux
> would have the same results, but does anyone have any idea why? The
> laptops use Broadcom ethernet if that's relevant in this case.
>
> Regards,
>
> James
>

I have seen this sort of problem on my work HP NC6000 from time to time.
It has windows XP on it. At one point it stayed in this bad state. IT
support suggested that I remove the network driver, and then let
window auto detect again and install it. Removing the network driver
resulted in a blue screen and the PC failed to boot after that. A
complete new install of windows cured the problem. The HD was not at
fault.
I think that windows just corrupts itself sometimes or it might be
some strange packets on the network causing windows to corrupt itself.
I did not try the "boot to linux" option, I might next time.

James