"A Network cable is un-plugged"

[Brutalfate]

Hey there, I'm having a bit of trouble connecting one of my PC's to the net, Its an older machine (P3 733, 256MB, 40GB) with intergrated 10/100 LAN, I've never had any problems like this before.. I have a cable router/switch in which All the pc's in the house get there internet from.. I've also tried 2 network cards.. but no luck there, i keep getting "A Network cable is un-plugged". Any ideas whats up?

Thanks.

[Wile E]

Did you try a different cable? If so, try a different port on the router. Maybe one went bad.

[Brutalfate]

Alright.. 'Kay i've tried using different cables, I tried connecting the PC directly to the Modem, no luck there either..

I don't know what the hells going on, I just suddenly got a connection, then the PC went all laggy and I get "A Network cable is un-plugged" again. Lol.

[Brutalfate]

I'll try disabling the on-board Lan.. and just try using the network card.

[Brutalfate]

Tried reconfiguring the router, no luck there either. :(

[Wile E]

Sounds like something is dying, be it windows or hardware. Do any of the other pcs do this?

[Brutalfate]

None of my other Pc's do this, no... I might try a re-install of Xp.

[Brutalfate]

WTF.. Now its working... Lol. I didn't change anything either. O_o I was going to use this Pc as a dedicated music server.. But it seems a bit too unreliable.. I might just keep it as extra storage.. Wile E, thanks for your help man, appreciated.

[Brutalfate]

Also, would it be bad have the pc on and running 24/7?

[Wile E]

Also, would it be bad have the pc on and running 24/7?

Probably, considering you're having problems. It is pretty old. If it isn't a software related problem, leaving it on would only serve to kill it faster. I'm assuming it's been a while since you reformatted, you might want to give that a go anyway. Also, open up the case and make sure everything is clean. I just had a friend's computer(1.3GHz celeron, bout 5-6years old) in here that would suddenly stop recognizing the hard drive and go black screen after about 30-45 mins. Here, his entire cpu heatsink was filled with dust, killing all the airflow, and causing it to overheat. All I did was clean the inside of his computer really well with a can of air, paying extra attention to the cpu heatsink. It's been running non-stop for a week with no probs.

One last suggestion, with that small amount of ram, I would suggest a Linux distro to use as a file server. XP would choke the sh1t out of that thing running as a file server on 256MB. There are linux distros that are set up specifically for the task of file server on older machines. Most of them also include Samba(Windows) sharing

[JC316]

I would say your onboard LAN is crapping out. The same thing happend to my Athlon XP machine after a lightning storm. A new network card didn't do anything either, until I disabled the onboard LAN, then that fixed everything.