WiTP killed my machine!

[TulliusDetritus]

Irrelevant, yes, I have some experience with this. When I switched to ADSL my internet provider gave to me an USB modem (for free). My M$ partition was Win98 SE. Then reboots started... I did not know why. Well, then it was the bloody USB modem fault [:@] The ***** was sucking many ressources of the machine. Conclusion: I had to buy a router (RealTek ethernet card). So be careful and ask before.

I think you should switch to WinXP/2000 though. Good luck.

P.S.:
periodic "format c:"'s are a must in Windows. They are the best medicine, the only method which can get rid of weird "problems" [:)]

[tsimmonds]

What else you got in the box?

There's a modem, that can easily go. Some kind of video/sound card (obviously I don't have the machine here). Nothing else extra really in the way of hardware. It does have two USB ports, I have used them for downloading pics from a digital camera and for transferring files to/from a flash stick, so I presume there's drivers installed for those things. The serial port was used for DCC ages ago, who knows what that has left in its wake. There are lots of games that I have tried to uninstall with partial success, which still have folders and uninstall icons, but that say they cannot be uninstalled for one reason or another. I am using Registry Mechanic, which finds many errors that it will not repair without me registering the software, which I would gladly do if I could get on the net with that machine!

[Cmdrcain]

I'm not so impressed with a tech sayng your Mobo might be bad, if it were bad/going bad you would have problems with it in other ways, as you say it only occurs as a problem when the ethernet is installed its either the ethernet card (it could be whats bad) or bad drivers, it also could be your mobo and that particular brand of ethernet card don't like each other..

I'd suspect the card.



I recall long back where One Video card wouldn't work but a different did, it was the card.

The card that didn't work worked ok in a different system... so the motherboard in some way
didn't like the first card... [:D]

You tried returning the ehthernet card for another or a different brand?

[tsimmonds]

Well, after hours of fiddling around with the ethernet card and sundry drivers and software, I finally got the thing up and running. The turning point seemed to be when I removed the now useless modem and its drivers. Last night Mrs. irrelevant was on line, sitting across from me, while I was working on my turn. I bored her with tales of my gaming prowess while she kept me up to date on breaking news and celebrity gossip, and we discussed menu possibilities for unspecified future meals.

Life is good.....[;)]

[Terminus]

ORIGINAL: irrelevant

Life is good.....[;)]

You do of course realise that just because you made that post, your computer is now busily calculating the optimum time to crash the HD, irretrievably destroying every bit of data you own, right? [;)]

[tsimmonds]

Hah! That computer will never die for the simple reason that its data files are now fully backed up!

[Cmdrcain]

ORIGINAL: irrelevant

Well, after hours of fiddling around with the ethernet card and sundry drivers and software, I finally got the thing up and running. The turning point seemed to be when I removed the now useless modem and its drivers. Last night Mrs. irrelevant was on line, sitting across from me, while I was working on my turn. I bored her with tales of my gaming prowess while she kept me up to date on breaking news and celebrity gossip, and we discussed menu possibilities for unspecified future meals.

Life is good.....[;)]

This reminds me, when I once updated the Toolbar provided by my ISP, it happened to install their darn "accelerator" which was for use by dialups (a caching thig or such) anyway I couldn't connect to internet with my email etc..

After checking it as it was the newest installed thing and internet connection was ok until then I noted it had accelerator installed I removed that and internet worked ok (cable)

So you have to watch some updates they can change or add things that can muckup stuff, Accelerators for dialups not cable users but it was installed by default(sent ISP an letter complaining) instead f something to choose or not when upgraded..

Point?

You still had a modem and modem drivers installed but i presume moved to dsl/cable, in that case the pc was still trying connect through modem, using drivers etc and so the ethernet wasn't connecting proper [:D]

[tsimmonds]

Now that you mention it, that's probably what happened here; I installed MindSpring's fancyschmancy toolbar about two years ago and that is when I first started having problems with that machine (scandisk and defrag not completing). Move to satellite about 6 months later, and then bought the new machine soon after, so I never got p1ssed off enough to figure it out until now.