Re: [Hampshire] Linux miracle cure?

James Ashburner wrote:
> 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.

I have seen situations reminiscent of this with graphics settings in a
Dell Inspiron 1100, which has been an unusually diificult latop model
to use with Ubuntu and other distros for a couple of years now.

I concluded that the bios and or mainboard chips have an undefined
state - at say, startup, the initial conditions are not fully reset,
or similar.
I was quite taken aback when after the use of a live CD I saw
different video behaviour!
--
alan cocks
Ubuntu user