GA-890GPA-UD3H onboard LAN suddenly OUT

[WAWood8]

Been using this mobo for a little over a month, and then suddenly today, when I booted the PC, couldn't get a LAN connection.

Suspected the router or ISP, but booting another machine got network access.

Have several OS's on this box, including Linux, tried them all -- same result, no LAN.

Notice no light on the router for the cable connecting to my PC, also noticed no lights on the back of the machine.

Ran the SMART  LAN BIOS test -- reports  Normal / Length = 0m on all 8 parts.

According to the manual, this means that the LAN port has stopped working.

Board is over a month old, so there's no returning it to the store where I bought it.

And Yes, I could buy a LAN card, but the board only has two PCI slots, and I really want the onboard LAN to work.

This is the first Gigabyte board I've had.  Always bought ASUS before -- never had onboard LAN problems with those boards -- so, have no history of Gigabyte boards to compare this to.

Is this a known problem with this board?

Are there any other tests I can try (I'm posting this from another PC).

What are my RMA options if the LAN port is indeed "dead"?

[Dark Mantis]

If the LAN orts are dead, or for that matter any other hardware problem with the board then you will need to arrange an RMA via your retailer.

From past experience try removing the power lead from the PSU press the power botton and the replace the power lead and boot up.

[absic]

Hi,

Are you running the latest driver for the Realtek LAN? The latest version was released on the 26/1/11 and it might be worthwhile updating to this version if you haven't already done so. There have been a couple of instances where, on dual BOOT Systems, the LAN has stopped working with older drivers.

[WAWood8]

Good point on the drivers.  Probably not running the lastest as I installed them from the Gigabyte CD.

I'll check their website and download the latest drivers.

Thanks

[WAWood8]

Installed the latest drivers -- LAN works again -- for a while!

Installed them in the 32-bit Win7.  LAN worked.

Rebooted, this time, into the 64-bit OS.  LAN suddenly worked.  But, installed the updated drivers anyway.  LAN still works.

Rebooted, this time into Ubuntu 10.10.  LAN still does NOT work.  Nothing seems to fix it.

Rebooted into 32-bit Win7.  LAN no longer works!

So, looks like something in Ubuntu is "killing" the LAN.  Don't have the time or patience to work that out right now.

[WAWood8]

OK, found Linux drivers for the RealTek LAN.  Will try to "make" them to see if that fixes the problem.

Otherwise, it appears that I have an intermittent LAN port.

[WAWood8]

OK ... bit the bullet and updated the BIOS to FF.  Didn't want to jump into the Beta FGA BIOS just yet.

After that, the RealTek LAN works in ALL OS's!

So, I guess that really did "fix" it.

[absic]

Hi,
pleased to see that the BIOS update seems to have fixed this particular issue and that the update went smoothly for you.

[WAWood8]

And you know, I should have guessed that it would -- because one of the recent BIOS upgrades includes some comments about the "new LAN".  So, they most probably fixed whatever was causing the "old LAN' to become intermittent.

And, expecting the worst, I booted back and forth between Linux and the Win7 versions, fully expecting that either (1) the LAN would no longer work in Linux, or (2) Linux would "break" the LAN so it no longer worked in Win7 -- and neither of these happened.

So maybe, they did actually fix the LAN problems with the BIOS update.

[gruffalogill]

Just when everything else was going swimmingly - the same thing just happened to me! Trouble is. I'm already on FF. Anyhoo, quick uninstall/reinstall seems to have done the trick.

[WAWood8]

Just when everything else was going swimmingly - the same thing just happened to me! Trouble is. I'm already on FF. Anyhoo, quick uninstall/reinstall seems to have done the trick.

Yeah ... well, I spoke too soon.  Since then, I've had the LAN go out twice on me.  And, I'm using both the latest LAN drivers & SW, and the FF BIOS.

In both cases, I disconnected and then reconnected the cable -- and did not immediately see a change.  So, I started the Realtek Diagnostic app, but by the time I ran the diags, it seemed to be back.

So, the LAN is STILL intermittent, it just seems to come back with less work than before.

[absic]

Hi,
I did a little experimenting over the weekend with my own rig (GA-890FXA-UD5 Rev 2.1) that uses the same Realtek LAN controller and found that I could duplicate your problem if I tried dual booting with the latest version of Ubuntu 64 bit. (I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit). I experienced exactly the same issue with the LAN dropping out, especially from within Windows.

Running a Hard drive with only Ubuntu or only with Windows installed and the LAN worked without a problem but as soon as I went back to trying to dual boot the LAN connector was dropped. I think there must be an issue between Windows and some distributions of Linux but I'm not sure what the cause of the problem is or why it's happening. 

This is something that really should be addressed by Gigabyte Technical Support and I was wondering if you have actually raised this problem with them yet?

[WAWood8]

This is something that really should be addressed by Gigabyte Technical Support and I was wondering if you have actually raised this problem with them yet?

No, I haven't -- and I don't intend to.  When I looked at the Gigabyte site to get new drivers, I noticed they have a disclaimer on their webpages that says, essentially, that they don't support Linux distros.  So basically, it's unlikely they would care about a conflict between Ubuntu and Windows 7.

As for me, the problem became worse when I was booting back and forth between Win7 64-bit and Ubuntu 10.10 32-bit.  Now that I have essentially abandoned the Win7 64-bit experiment and gone back to 32-bit, the problem doesn't seem to occur.

[jolphil]

I remember reading an issue about if Grub2 takes over the MBR then when windows7 is dual booting,some sort of problem will show up..
For the life of me I can't remember where I saw it or exactly what it was..
Perhaps a goggle of Windows 7 and Grub issues might find something out..
Goodluck
jolphil

[blackie]

And again they have updated the LAN driver. New version is dated is 11 Feb 2011 (a month after the last update).

Seems they are still having problems and trying different solutions.