[tech2me]

Hello all. New guy here. Diving in head first, lol.

Anyways, my issue is with a laptop that I am working on. It has an integrated Realtek NIC adapter. When I go into Network Connection upon boot, I see that the local area connection is disabled. If I enable it (which works flawlessly) I can get right on to the internet for the duration that the laptop is powered up.

I guess my question is this: Why does the NIC keep getting disabled everytime I reboot? I have looked in Services (By the way this is a WinXP Home sysytem) and Network Connections is enabled and started with boot.

I have scanned the PC for viruses and it is coming up 100% clean. Any help is greatly appreciated. This is driving me NUTS to say the least.

[tech2me]

bump and a pray!

[gurutech]

Check to make sure it's enabled in the BIOS, and that any "Wake On LAN" settings (in both the BIOS and in WinXP) are DISABLED.

[JohnWill]

Just in case, let's do this.

TCP/IP stack repair options for use with Windows XP with SP2.

For these commands, Start, Run, CMD to open a command prompt.

Reset WINSOCK entries to installation defaults: netsh winsock reset catalog

Reset TCP/IP stack to installation defaults. netsh int ip reset reset.log

Reboot the machine.

[cmw2010]

What brand of laptop do you have?

[tech2me]

It's an Acer... I will be in the shop in about 2 hours. I will be sure to try these things when I get there. Thanks for the responses and I will let you know. Thanks again.

[cmw2010]

Check in your Acer epower management utility and see if your profiles are set to have the network disabled on logon.

[TerryNet]

gurutech, while we're waiting for tech2me to get back, why is it important to have Wake On Lan disabled? And why disabled in both BIOS and Windows?

[gurutech]

TerryNet, I've always found that WOL and power management (at least in my experience) have had problems getting along.

As far as making sure it's disabled both in BIOS and Windows, sometimes the option is not available in the BIOS, so I was just making sure to "kill the bird" with two stones.... (a play on the "killing two birds with one stone" bit...

[TerryNet]

Thanks, gurutech. That makes sense.