DescentBB

Every time I cold start my computer after a number of hours, Windows comes up without the ethernet detected. So I reboot the machine and this time ethernet is there and working.

My only guess is a physical problem with the ethernet hardware on the motherboard that requires it to be warmed up. Any other ideas? Anyone heard of this or seen it before? My Google-fu doesn't appear up to the task.

Try turning off power saving on it. Click the config button in it's propetries.

That \"power-saving\" feature on NICs was a huge pain for my department a few months back, when a bunch of our overnight automations didn't run because of an upgrade which reset that feature.

I always ask if the client has recently installed or updated software, next any guests on the system, (people will fiddle with other peoples computers), and from now on if its a Dell or something similar, (emachine, MDG, etc.) I'm charging extra because I have experienced some of the weirdest problems with those machines and the users usually drive me batty.

Doesn't your system have dual NICs ? Does it happen w/ both ?

I've been doing the double boot thing for a couple of months, not wanting to deal with fixing it. It happened as part of a \"blowup,\" when my machine blue screened and I had to reset the BIOS to defaults to even get it to boot. It wasn't due to any new hardware or software, just one of those things. I'm the only one on this machine and I built it myself. The mobo is an Asus P5wD2-E Premium, which has given me nothing but headaches since I bought it. At least it hasn't totally borked, like all my other previous Asus boards.

Anyway, the power savings trick didn't help, but I'll keep it in mind in the future.

The board does have dual nics, but Windows only recognizes one of them even though they're both enabled in the BIOS. When I plug a cable into the one Windows doesn't see it lights up, so it can't be all that dead.

I'll try my Knoppix 5 DVD and see how Linux sees things.

Well Linux sees the nic that Windows doesn't; I'm currently posting through it via Knoppix. So I guess I've got a borked Windows install.

One thing to try tomorrow morning will be booting cold into Knoppix to see if that requires a double boot as well.