I need a new Network PC1 card to solve a problem.

anotherquestion

Hi folks,

I have an old desktop pc 16 years (has had a few upgrades in its time but otherwise running good) I do have a problem though

Connected to Erro Router (with Youfibre through Ethernet) I do have this problem very often when either I start the PC or wakes from Sleep that the internet is not connected, The network adpater is a Realtek PC 1e GBe family controller, and no amouint of troubleshooting has solved it, i.e changing ethernet cable, updating driver enabling or disabling things in the Network adapter properties.

The only way to solve it is to right click on the Globe bottom taskbar, (shows when no internet) choose ethernet and let it do a network adapter reset, works every time, and doesn't take too long to be honest.

I believe though that I can buy a network card that may solve this problem and will probably allow a better download speed if I was to upgrade to a 2000 package with Youfibre.

I have bought a lot of stuff on ALiexpress find it a lot better and cheaper than Ebay, and looking at a card like this,

Kebidumei 2.5G PCI-E To RJ45 Network Card 2500Mbps RJ45 PCI Express Converter Lan Ethernet Gigabit Adapter For PC Win 7/8/10/11 - AliExpress 7

The motherboard on my PC is an Asus M4A785TD-V-Evo

Thanks for any advice.

flaneurs_lobster

Difficult to argue against anything that costs £3.34 (including shipping) and will probably do the job.

anotherquestion

Well they are probably giving you a welcome deal at that price, the one I want is the 2500Mbps which costs £8.19.

I have become a great fan of Aliexpress and had good experiences with it, though site is a little confusing at times. Everything comes in a week and you can see Tracking all the way leaving warehouse, clearing customs, waiting for flight etc.

Just want to get rid of the problem, will be using Ethernet again into that card, if anyone can see a problem let me know that it might not work before I buy.

Thanks.

Lorian

On the existing controller have you tried turning off "allow windows to turn off this device to save power" in device manager - select device - power management.

Also have you tried giving it a static IP address in case it's an issue with slow DHCP reply.

Neil_Jones

Three thoughts:

1) Modern systems boot up so quick Windows is up and ready to go before it has connected to the network. As that motherboard dates from 2009 this is unlikely to be the case in this particular instance.

2) I suggest if this is an ISP router (siince you haven't mentioned changing it) swap it out for any other router.

While there would be no internet connection on it the computer should give you an IP address to the router (ie 192.168.1.105 or whatever) which should in theory connect automatically to the router if no internet. If you can reproduce this every time on sleep/boot up to get your local IP address that suggests there isn't an issue with the onboard network port.

3) Conflicting information on exactly what network port is on this board, drivers page says RTL8111C but the quick start guide says RTL8112L - a Google on the latter seems to suggest this NIC may have issues under later versions of Windows after 8.

anotherquestion

Thanks for replies, sometimes it can go for a week or so without happening, then happen for a few days in a row when booting the pc, sometimes too when waking from sleep mode.

I thought it might be the router, so tried the static IP in the mobile Eero app, tried the power saving thing. but still happens.

It doesn't take long to reset the adapter when no internet, maybe 30-40 seconds, quicker than restarting PC so living with it as one of these little things.

Youfibre have a different router now, and were willing to send it to me (new router has its own problems I believe) just renewed contract, and they were willing to send it to me with a mesh extender, but they wanted to charge an extra £5 a month for extender, I had already had one for free with the Eero, and it works ok, so I declined the offer as they definitely wanted the old Eero and extender back.

But for the sake of less than a £10 for a new card I will probably try that.

Heedtheadvice

I belive there could be a whole host of problems, possibly associated with timing.

That earlier mention of switching off all 'smartish' settings to power down the interface might be beneficial. A shot in the dark but if you have not tried those settings then maybe worth a try? They do slow down things.

Running the prog Latencymon can be very revealing.

anotherquestion

Well New pc card unfortunately has the same problem as the Onboard LAN adapter, though probably worse though I should have gone for a different chipset on the new card other than the Realtek which is the same make as onboard one.

I have tried all that stuff switching off fast startup, all the smart and power options but still the same.

I even have stopped a few startup programes and ,changed antivirus.

Can't think of anything else to try with the new card (works sometimes) at least with the onboard its easy to reset the adapter within Windows, a lot of the time the new card is missing from device manage, even tried different drivers etc. At least the onboard one doesn't disappear from device manager (though no internet with it sometimes) but it doesn't take more than 30 seconds to reset.

Old pc about 16 years.

JSmithy45AD

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81896819#Comment_81896819

Given the age of the PC, what version of Windows are you running?

Edit: I see you were running Win10 but had managed to bypass the Win11 restrictions and install it previously. Is it still on 11 and have you managed to keep it up to date?

anotherquestion

Well its dual boot, don't really use Windows 11, so its 10 most of the time, I still get updates on 11, but I think there might be a OS update I haven't installed. Yet.

It is an old pc but with an SSD and 12GB ram and a quad core AMD Phenom 945 cpu, its fast enough for me.

I have installed Avast Prenium (free sub from PC pro) and uninstalled Kaspersky, to see if it was conflicting with the Realtek drivers, but I doubt that.

Does anyone think maybe trying a PC1 LAN with a different chipset other than Realtek might help and recommendations would be helpful.

I get them cheap enough on Aliexpress come quickly and half the price of Ebay.

Keruge

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6654686/i-need-a-new-network-pc1-card-to-solve-a-problem

I would have got an old card from Freecycle, never felt confident buying from Ali Express.

Something you might try is not to update the drivers but to roll them back, often there driver updates that fix one thing only to mess up another. Then the device goes out of support and you are stuck.

Find the webpage that has the drivers and then stick it into Archive.org, choose the year before the current drivers and if you are lucky they will download from there. Alternatively look around on the web on sites that have old one.

You might also seek to get a different ethernet card chipset, so if your current one is RealTech then choose another.