RenoF250

I spoke too soon. As soon as any kind of video card driver is installed the network quits. I have tried it with an nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4200, ATI Rage MAXX, and a Diamond Stealth III. The last two automatically used the windows drivers. Why would the video card clobber the network? The card says it is still working properly and there are no conflicts.

Well, my Ethernet magically started working last night. I had a problem and had to come up in safe mode. I did nothing in safe mode, just rebooted and the ethernet worked. I have no idea why that made it work but you may want to give it a try. I have since gone back to the onboard LAN and it is working fine. I love microsoft stability.

I have the exact same problem with almost the same hardware listed. Mine suddenly quit working about the same time as the USB ports on the back of my computer quit. I gave up trying to fix it and decided to reinstall XP. FDISKed and wiped the disk clean to do a fresh install. Everything worked (USB and Ethernet) until I installed the video drivers (MSI GeForce 4 Ti 4200), then USB died. Then I installed the sound card (Audigy 2 ZS) drivers and the Ethernet died. I suspected the NEC USB driver on the motherboard was bad and bought a new motherboard and started over. This board has yet to have functioning Ethernet. I have reinstalled XP 3 times on this motherboard and tried 2 Ethernet cards plust the onboard LAN. I have upgraded the software in my router (Netgear WGR 614) and tried another Linksys router to no avail. I am at my wits end, I cannot figure out what would be causing this. I know the NIC is transmitting because the lights flash and I have intalled a packet sniffer on this computer and can see it transmit. I read something on the Microsoft site about wireless computers transmitting a UNICAST packet and having similar problems but it was supposed to be fixed with a newer version of dhcpcsvc.dll that I have and I am not wireless anyway. Any ideas would be appreciated. I really cannot understand how this worked just a little while ago and now it is completely hosed.