Z68X-UD3H-B3 Lan stopped working

[anonxlg]

One day, it just stopped working (this was 3 weeks ago)
i tired updating bios (F12 now), nothing happens (no activity led blinking at all)
plugged same cable in laptop it works
it did appear in my device manager but nothing happens (no activity  led blinking at all), now it doesnt even show up in device manager
tried disabling and enabling lan in bios, no effect

i'm out of ideas, and it's really annoying

might as well add that i'm having boot problems with this motherboard (day one problems)
the mobo would randomly reboot 1/2/3/4+ times before getting to the win7 boot screen
this is not consistent, on some days, it will boot as expected, i'd say there's a 40/60 chance of it rebooting multiple times before it gets to win7 screen
simple googling shows that this is a known problem and i cant believe it hasnt been fixed in bios update

additionally, my dvd drive sometime disappears from the system randomly just like the rebooting
sometimes it will show up, sometimes it will not

i have my 3 harddrives plugged into the black satas port, and the dvd drive plugged into the grey sata port (is this the best configurations)

other specs:
i5-2500k, no overclocking
2x4 ddr3-1333 g skill
6870
600w ocz psu
windows 7 pro

i'm located in canada... didnt find forum for the americas

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome. No problem with you posting here, we don't have any problem with Canadians!  

Firstly let me sort out your hard drive configuration. You failed tpo say what drives you are using but anyway the most speed critical way to set them out is as follows. The black ports are SATA2 whereas the others are all SATA3 so the best ports for your hard drives are SATA3_0 and SATA3_1 followed by the GSATA ports which are the top most grey ones. Any of the other ports are fine for optical drives. The controllers should be set to AHCI mode in the BIOS.

As for your problem try an extended CMOS clear. Follow these instructions exactly please :

Remove the power cable from the mains supply and then press the power switch on the case for a few seconds just to drain any residual energy in the PSU capacitors.

Once done remove the motherboard battery overnight  (or for at least 6 hours) before replacing it.
 
Next plug back into the mains supply and boot.
 
You will now need to enter the BIOS by pressing DEL and load Optimised BIOS Defaults.

Make any other changes to the BIOS settings to suit your self like disabling the floppy drive, disabling the full screen logo and making the HDD the primary boot device and then press F10 to save and exit.

For your information there is a forum in the USA called TweekTown. You can find it here:

http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/

[anonxlg]

nope, followed instructions, both problems persists

[Dark Mantis]

In am afraid that it sounds like a hardware failure and so will have to be RMAed back to Gigabyte. You can try returning it to your retailer as this is the approved method but if there is a problem with this then arrange to send it directly to the manufacturer. Contact the RMA department locally.

[Col. Ives]

Since the my problem is the exact same and I'm also a Canuck like the OP, I'll continue here to tell my somewhat similar tale of woe.

Luckily, I bought a 2-year extended in store replacement warranty for the MB and CPU, but I don't want to be without my computer for days on end because it's my primary source of after work entertainment such as games and Netflix ergo I ask meagerly for assistance because this issue is beyond my scope of diagnostics. I've been researching this issue for about 12 hrs.

I have the said Z68X-UD3H-B3 board with a i5-2500k (no overclock - stock), Antec Earthwatts-Green 500W, and 2 sticks of 4G Vengeance ram.
 Every piece of hardware  is about a year old.
I have the SATA controller set up as AHCI; the DVD drive is plugged into the SATA2_2 and the SATA 6 Hard disk is plugged into the GSATA3_5.
I was running a HD6850 up 'til recent when I upgraded to a HD7970 no OC.
This is where the LAN problem came into play...

By my own mistake and stupidity; I had the computer off to swap cards (instead of uninstalling the old AMD Catalyst driver prior and blah blah). No problem though when I started up the W7 computer, everything went great up until I found that I had no Internet access ( No Connection). I checked the modem (power bleed/restart) and everything was apparently good. I even swapped out the Ethernet cable, but nothing changed. I noticed that there were no activity lights on the LAN. The same thing, the LAN has dropped from the Device Manager list.

 Coincidentally, I did do a power bleed before I found Dark Mantis's post, but I only had the CMOS battery out for roughly 15 mins and held down the case power button. Nothing changed, but maybe I didn't have the CMOS battery out overnight (board takes 'that' long to drain?).

The next biggest diagnostic I did was to uninstall the video card and driver, then  swapped out my primary hard disc for the temp one I had used when I first built that comp and the computer started up again with a dead LAN, so I'm doubting the problem is driver errors per se - due to switching out same branded video cards without swapping drivers first (again, my mistake) - because I was running off of the onboard video. I did other diagnostics, but forgot what I did because it did no good anyways. Har har.

For now, I installed a NIC for 'net access. I can survive like that without any hard feelings... but for resale, I don't wish to do the "uhh" story to a potential buyer why the on-board LAN doesn't work anymore and honestly I'm even uncomfortable in knowing the LAN isn't working.