Networks Vista cannot see LAN, but XP can on dual boot

I have spent several days trying to solve this problem, so thought I would see if anyone here has any thoughts. I have searched the forums here (and elsewhere) extensively and read about similar problems but not found a working solution.

Vista 64 - Home Premium, have applied SP1
Vista firewall turned off, no 3rd party software/virus checkers loaded
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 Rev 2.0 - latest F13 firmware and chip drivers installed
ethernet cable (have swapped cables - so not cable) into a Sky Router DG834DGT firmware V1.03.87

I have installed Vista 7 or 8 times, including on just a single drive with nothing else, but currently dual booting from an XP system. The XP system works fine, good network performance and no problems connecting to broadband or a second machine (which is generally turned off)

Under Vista I cannot connect to the network, cannot PING any sites, just does not work.
Device manager lists one network adapter the Realtek RTL8168B and have tried the latest driver from Gigabyte, currently trying V6.208 which is later from Realtek site.
Have tried setting a static IP (used 192.168.0.2, although left the gateway address empty) but no difference, have speed manually set to 10 Mb/s and half duplex in case its speed detection.
Have disable TCP/IP 6.

Used netsh to reset TCP/IP stack and winsock

Vista Diagnose and repair says
"A cable is not plugged into the network adapter"
Other messages
"The adapter is not connected"
"This computer is not connected to a network"
"The computer does not have a wireless adapter installed"

Nothing seems to make a difference, but works on the XP side of the dual boot, so thinking its some configuration option in Vista that I am missing,

any help greatly appreciated - fallback is going to be buying a NIC

 

Weird - I have a GA-P35-DS4 rev1.0 w/F12 bios and have connected fine using the inbuilt nic in Vista x64 HP and SP1. Have you used this driver?

 

Thanks for reply, its good to know the DS4 inbuilt NIC will work with Vista x64 HP

I Have tried all the drivers, but just in case I missed one downloaded the one in your link - but no change - still fails to connect/see the adapter.

I might try the F12 bios when all else fails

 

Now tried the F12 bios but seems to make no difference, Vista just fails to see any network connections. Must be a Vista configuration issue.

 

Sounds like you've tried a bunch of things there you didn't need to. First-off, I wouldn't bother disabling TCP/IP v6. The Vista TCP/IP stack is native IPv6 with a v4 layer on top, so disabling v6 isn't going to make a lot of odds. You don't want to be setting the speed and duplex manually, the NIC will negotiate those with the switchport at the other end; manually setting them at one end is actually a bad thing to do in general, as it prevents the other end from negotiating working settings. Fortunately, a 100baseTX port will fall back to 10Mbit half-duplex if it can't negotiate, so you got lucky! Also, setting a private IP without a default gateway won't help, as the machine won't be able to route off its network.

All that aside, this definitely sounds like a software or driver issue. First-off, what does Device Manager look like? Is anything alarmed that shouldn't be? What if you select View, Show Hidden Devices - does this yield anything with a yellow (!) ? Are there any unknown devices listed?

Next, Event Viewer - hit Start and type 'eventvwr.msc', and Continue on the UAC prompt. Under Windows Logs, open up the System log, then hit the Level column header to sort by that. Do you have any Error-level logs relating to Realtek drivers, the TCP stack or any chipset-level devices?

Finally, have you installed the Intel chipset drivers for your board? The current Intel driver for the P35 chipset is here: http://downloadmirror.intel.com/16023/a08/infinst_autol.exe

(Edit: also worth mentioning that if Vista can't 'see' that the network cable is plugged in, nothing else will help - that's a layer 1/2 problem, so adjusting settings on the TCP/IP stack won't help you unfortunately)

 

The Vista x64 drivers from Intel are here. I'm a bit wary of direct downloads of exe files

 

Well, I went from this page - the link I provided is clearly to the INF installer on Intel's download mirror site, but point taken.

 

Thank you both for the information, very useful

I have updated the Chipset drivers to Vn 9 with the download from Intel
I have also gone back to using the RealTek driver for the onboard NIC
Also reset winsock and TCP/IP but makes no difference

None of this got the LAN working so ran eventvwr.msc which reported a number of errors.
Several of these related to the built in card reader on my Dell monitor so I unplugged the USB connection to that and rebooted. Wow networking started to work and I was able to use IE to access the microsoft site - then it died, must have lasted for about 2 minutes. Back to refusing to see the Network although a few improvements

I previously had IPv6 disabled because when I clicked on properties for this, it always complained about not having a suitable network adapter. I can now get the properties on IPv6

Device manager reports adapter working and no problems with any other hardware, no yellow (!) or unknown devices listed

eventvwr.msc reports 2 System errors
HttpEvent - package Kerberos failed to initialise - ( a check with Google seems to show this is a common error to do with SP1 having been installed and should not affect networking)

PDIHWCTL - failed to start - still looking into this, but some report to do with DELL

Also some application errors , I cleared logs and will check on these this evening

Thanks for the help - a little bit of progress

 

Spent many more hours investigating the lack of networking last night. Have also tried 4 different cables and 3 different routers to eliminate that as a factor, but same difference.

When Vista starts, now get network for about 5 - 10 seconds with yellow ? on network ICON before it becomes a red cross. During this time IE will try and connect - sometimes OK. Been through the reports in the eventvwr.msc but have not found any messages that relate to network dropping its link

One difference I have found is that device manager under XP (show hidden devices) lists 2 entries for the network adapter:
Realtek RTL8168/8111 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC
Realtek RTL8168/8111 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC - Packet Schedular Miniport

The Miniport is not listed in the Vista Device Manger (View / Show hidden devices)

Should this be present on Vista ?

 

The lack of the packet scheduler miniport device is to be expected - Vista's networking stack doesn't work in the same way, so it doesn't require this shadow scheduling device.

If you go into Network and Sharing Center, Manage Network Connections, what state does it show for the link (i.e. 'network cable unplugged', 'connected with limited access', etc.)?

 

Thanks for the information, one less thing to try and understand

Network & sharing centre reports "Not connected"

Connect to a network responds with "Windows cannot find any Networks"

Diagnose and repair says "A cable is not plugged into the network adapter" Local Area Connection
I have established that "Local Area Connection" is the Realtek onboard NIC by enabling/disabling it and seeing the network icon vanish from Manage Network Connections. Device manager reports the NIC to be working properly

Also get " this computer does not have a wireless network adapter installed" This is true and might indicate its looking for the wrong thing but cannot see what this relates too

In event viewer, I get Dhcp-Client
"Your computer was successfully assigned an address from the network and can now connect to other computers"

No errors reported that show the connection being dropped

 

OK, that's fine - in Network and Sharing Center, click the link on the left to 'Manage Network Connections...'. What status does Local Area Connection report?

(It's also normal for Windows to complain it can't find any wireless networks under certain circumstances when running the Diagnose and Repair wizard - it's benign, don't worry)

 

Found the information you asked for

The status is reported as "Network cable unplugged"

It also seems that when booting XP to Vista the network connection seems to last for about 20 seconds instead of about 5 seconds for Vista to Vista boot, almost as if something in Vista is modifying working settings on the router or the NIC.

I have applied a change to the registry to set "DhcpConnForceBroadcastFlag = 0" - this was previously set to 1, but has made no difference.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928233

 

What other connections are shown? If you have a 1394 (firewire) connection listed in there, try disabling it. I'd also recommened unplugging all non essential peripherals incase something is conflicting.

 

OK, let's try something different. Open up Device Manager, Network Adapters and delete (remove) all network adapters. Shut down the machine, unplug the PSU from the wall, and press and hold the power button for about 5 seconds (to completely discharge any current left in the PSU). Plug the mains back in, boot the machine back into Vista and let Windows reinstall the driver for your NIC. What happens now?

 

Thanks for contributing

Device manager only shows the the NIC as a network device, no 1394 (firewire) connection on Vista although it does appear under XP. I have tried to get the machine down to as little as possible - disabled floppy connection (do not have one), serial and parallel ports. Only non essential device is a printer but that was installed yesterday and problem existed before then.

 

Thanks for your help seanblee

The Realtek NIC is the only device listed under network adapters - so will delete and try what you say

Thanks

 

I have managed to get networking working under Vista. Managed to connect and activate Vista, then run Windows update - 117MB for 18 updates installed.

The problem seems to be a conflict with the 1394 (firewire) port. When this is disabled in the BIOS, I have networking, when I make it available there is no neworking. I need the firewire port for connecting to my camcorder, but at worst will just have to enable then disable the port when transferring video.

It occurs to me that 1394 is not supported by the Intel chipset, so I will see if I can find a suitable driver for it, Windows update obviously cannot do it for me since no netwrking when its enabled.

Should the 1394 (firewire) appear as a network component in the Vista Device manager as with Windows XP?

Thanks for all the help seanblee, kenco_uk and Anator

 

The firewire and nic haven't somehow bridged themselves together?

 

Thanks - how would I check for that condition,

When I looked in Device Manager, the firewire is in its own category - something like 1394 devices and the NIC is in Network devices. The 1394 does not appear as a network device in the same way as it is on XP

Failed to find a suitable 1394 driver, so got Vista to reinstall one, but made no difference.