Windows 7 x64 Network Adapter Stops working on high load
My Network has been failing and ithas been happening forabout a month or soon Windows 7 x64. I dont think that the system configuration is the problem as it is happening on 2 seperate machines. One being a relatively beefed up "white" box, 4 gig OCZ ram, EVGA nForce 790I SLI Mobo, Q9600 Quad core processor, dual raid 1 -150 Gig Raptors, 2 8800GTX SLI cards, Pure Power 800W PS. The second machine is an IBM Netbook S10. I use the Netbook as a media center connected to a Pioneer Elite 1050HD. One thing is I have a PS3 and have several 1TB Esata drives connected to an IOGear 3132 Esata 3.0Gb pciX card to my desktop.My typical usages:1. FTP from a private server2. Streaming music via Winamp3. Streaming video 720, 1080 from pc to PS3via the PS3 Media Server4. DLing demos or movies on the PS35. Network streaming a movie from the Esata drives to the bedroom or kids rooms6. Streaming video from abc.com or southparkstudios.com from the Cox cable modem7. RDC over VPN to work machinesNow I have noticed that when I am streaming HEAVILY, from any 2 of the above mentioned, my network connections will simply stop working with a yellow exclamation mark on the task bar network icon after a few moments, nothing in the event logs, no logs or ANYTHING at all. It will simplystop working no notifications or anything poof, gone. I have EVERY single patch, driver anything I can think of installed. Nothing works, the timing is completely random. FYI I have a NETGEAR ProSafe VPN Firewall FVX538 with a cable modem connection on WAN 1 and a cellular connection on WAN2, these have no impact I feel on the connections because the PC may go down or the Netbook will go down depending on which one has the most load. So this simply tells me that it it not a firewall router problem as I have tried using a cisco unmanaged 24 port 1GB switch and I get the same problems. From analyzing the systems and layout I am led to believe that it is either a network adapter driver OR a Windows 7 problem (collisions, unhandled exception?), this NEVER happened with XP or Vista. I have tried everything but a new network adapter, I have tried the secondary adapter card on the mobo, I have tried bridging the two, I have tried daisy chaining the switch and putting each machine on its own dedicated switch linked to each other with no change. When the network goes down it is only that box effected, all other machines still connect to each other fine, only the one with load shuts down and the only ones that shut down are Windows 7. These machines are all wired with commercial cat5e patch cables, they have all been swapped for new ones lately. All networking and PC equipmentare on UPS so I doubt voltage variations. Windows Firewall is disabled I only use the hardware firewall, I do not use any antivirus.I am completely out of options, can anyone recommend a new route?In addition when I go to the command prompt and attempt to do an ipconfig /release. I get an error saying that the adapter is not in a usable state. Very irritating, this forces me to reboot, or right click disable/enable on the network adapter. The right click route takes almost a minute to complete.Tried update driver in nvidia control panel, no luck. I have also turned off the networking power saver option in the adapter settings.
November 9th, 2009 1:49am

Ok after much trolling I have found that anyone with Nvidia network adapter is susceptible to this problem and it is happening a lot. So I ran a patch from here:http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/nForce/15.51/15.51_nforce_win7_64bit_whql.exeAfter running the installation, I noticed that the driver version of the adapters DID NOT change in computer management. I used winrar to extract the contents of the above installation and did an update driver... and browsed the location I extracted the file to and did the update this way. This installed a newer driver version 73.1.4.0 dated 7/30/2009. Everything SEEMS to be running fine and I am hopeful. I will keep you posted if I have additional trouble or this rectifies the issue.
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November 9th, 2009 2:30am

The new driver resets the connection automatically. After several hours and dozens of "soft" resets of the adapter it finally failed and turned off. I will keep digging, if anyone has suggestions I would love to hear them.
November 9th, 2009 4:50am

Hi, Considering this issue occurs on 2 different machines, I also think this issue may be more hardware related. You may also try the following: 1. If the computers are connecting to a router, please ensure the routers firmware is up-to-date. 2. Please run the following command in an elevated command prompt in Windows 7: netsh interface tcp set global rss=disabled netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled netsh int ip set global taskoffload=disabled 3. Disable SNP in Windows 7 by setting Registry as following: Note: Please perform a full-system backup first. [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters] EnableTCPChimney=dword:00000000 EnableTCPA=dword:00000000 EnableRSS=dword:00000000 If the keys do not exist, please create them and assign the value. An update to turn off default SNP features is available for Windows Server 2003-based and Small Business Server 2003-based computers 4. If the issue persists, please add another network adapter to this computer and see how it works. Hope this helps. Thanks. Nicholas Li - MSFT
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November 10th, 2009 8:53am

Thank you Nicholas, I have applied the changes. Let me put it under some load today and I will report back any anomalies that I observe. Otherwise I will go get another NIC!Chad
November 10th, 2009 6:51pm

I am having the very exact same problem. I am using an evga 780i sli, which uses an nvidia chipset.
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November 13th, 2009 4:17am

Fithos,I did what Nicholas said above and this seems to have fixed the problem for me. If I have any more problems I will definately be back.Thank you Nicholas.
November 13th, 2009 6:49pm

I have the exact same problem as the rest of the crowd here. I'm on an ASUS P5N32-E SLI mobo with both nVidia nics connected to a switch. OS is Win 7 Ultimate 64bit. For me the problem is very frequent and I have to disable/enable the nics to regain access. I contacted ASUS support about it and all they said was that Win7 was not supportedfor my MB! Allthought they are in their right to not support all older modelswhen a newOS isrelease, I have found that almost all threads I have read concerning this specific problem has the users running their system on ASUSMBs - and many of them on much newerequipment than me.I have implemented the fix suggestedbyNicholas Li andI hope that fixes it. Will follow this thread closely and report back with any developments./Trond
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November 15th, 2009 12:00am

This so far has fixed the issue for me. I've been dealing with this for months, fiddling with NIC properties, power settings. Being frustrated to no end having to reset my NIC constantly while trying to stream media and do a second task at the same time. Thank you Nicholas!
November 15th, 2009 7:09am

ASUS P5GC-VM, Atheros L1 NIC, driver 2.4.7.29, Windows 7 Pro 64. Windows 7 Pro on my PC (Apache server) all other PCs are Vista Business 64. On the Windows 7 PC I set 'Task Offload=off". This fixed my disconnect problems. This option is found within the NIC config, Advanced tab, Task Offload=on/off.
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November 15th, 2009 7:28pm

Nice, thanks Blue! I am going to try that on my IBM netbook and see if that fixes the problem there and let everyone know.
November 15th, 2009 7:39pm

Hi All, I am very glad to know this worked! Your time and efforts on this issue is highly appreciated! I also hope this can benifit more of our users who meet the similar issue. In the future, if you experience any issues regarding our products or if you have any feedbacks, you are also welcome to post a new thread in our forum. It is always our pleasure to be of assistance. Thanks again. Have a great day!Nicholas Li - MSFT
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November 16th, 2009 7:49am

Hi again!About an hour after posting in this thread and applying the proposed fix the same thing happened. Had to disable and enable to reconnect. One thing changed though, and the fix made the disable/enable process MUCH faster! Will also try to set 'Task Offload=off' like Bluconnect suggested. Reporting back later with results.
November 16th, 2009 10:50pm

I've now got hours of listening to music from the server and two full backups without any issues. Could not get more than about 10 minutes worth of use before the Windows 7 PC would lose the connection. I even went back and re-enabled 'Task Offload" and my problem returned. Turned it off again and life is still good.
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November 17th, 2009 2:21am

Worked for my IBM Netbook, I think Blue found the problem! Thanks for everyones help.
November 17th, 2009 5:51am

THANK YOU! Spent a ridiculous amount of time to try and fix my problem, was having an almost similar issue, was able to browse net but downloads would apear to not work, but if left, after a few minutes the download would start and complete instantly (as if the file had downloaded in the background or something) and download managers or streaming media would not work, even youtube videos wouldn't work. I only did step 2 and its all fixed now and working, 2 friends had the same problem, both with nvidia NICs. thanks again. Andy
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November 20th, 2009 5:06am

I have tried your suggstions Nicholas and the problem persists. Can I just check that I have entered the Registry settings correctly. My entries are in the following place and look like this: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters Name Type Data EnableTCPChimney REG_DWORD 0x00000000(0) EnableTCPA REG_DWORD 0x00000000(0) EnableRSS REG_DWORD 0x00000000(0) There are a number of folders in Parameters (Adapters, DNS registered adapters, etc). I didn't put these entries into any of those. I didn't make a new key as I didn't know what to call the folder. So these entries above sit in Parameters. I selected DWORD 32 bit value. I have WIN 7 64 Any advise would be helpful as this problem is doing my head in. Perfect fast connections with XP Pro - drops with WIN 7
November 30th, 2009 5:29pm

On the nvidea forums they have found a solution that has worked for me. Go under advanced settings and set "receive side scaling" to disabled.
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December 15th, 2009 7:28am

Thank goodness I found this post (thanks for a referall from the EVGA forums)! This was killing me last night as I started to build out my Zune Pass music collection. I applied the command line updates only. It has worked flawlessly all day since applying the fix.As an FYI, mine is an EVGA 790i FTW SLI with Win7 Ult 64bit.Does anyone know if this is limited to EVGA boards, or is the a common problem across all NICs?Thank you Nicholas!MattDa
December 31st, 2009 7:33pm

Hi MattDa, Glad to know this helps. This issue doesn't occur on all NICs and I suspect this should be related to the specific device, maybe related to how it is designed or its compatibility with Windows 7. For more information, you can also contact the manufacture of the NIC. Thanks. Nicholas Li - MSFT
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January 4th, 2010 7:44am

Hi, Considering this issue occurs on 2 different machines, I also think this issue may be more hardware related. You may also try the following: 1. If the computers are connecting to a router, please ensure the router’s firmware is up-to-date. 2. Please run the following command in an elevated command prompt in Windows 7: netsh interface tcp set global rss=disabled netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled netsh int ip set global taskoffload=disabled 3. Disable SNP in Windows 7 by setting Registry as following: Note: Please perform a full-system backup first. [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters] EnableTCPChimney=dword:00000000 EnableTCPA=dword:00000000 EnableRSS=dword:00000000 If the keys do not exist, please create them and assign the value. An update to turn off default SNP features is available for Windows Server 2003-based and Small Business Server 2003-based computers 4. If the issue persists, please add another network adapter to this computer and see how it works. Hope this helps. Thanks. Nicholas Li - MSFT Hi, I'm experiencing a simular problem here. My PC was using Asus P5Q-E motherboard but exchanged it for Asus P5Q TURBO Pro because it loses 'connectivity ' after an interval between a few hrs to 26hrs. During this state, I can't browse or my Outlook to check emails. The only thing that can send/receive data is Vuze. Plus, the strange thing is that the network icon says there's nothing wrong at all (when it obviously there is). Even the currency desktop gadgets says the time elapsed since it 'lost connectivity '. I initially thought P5Q-E was faulty so now I'm using the TURBO Pro. However, the problem still persisted. I am using Win 7 Ultimate x64 with all the updates and drivers. Connected via LAN cable to the router and the firmware is the latest. My ISP sent me a replacement router to confirm that their equipment is not faulty, which is true. I have tried the above methods 1-3. Although I'm not sure if I implemented Method 3 correctly since I don't usually go to the registry but here's what it looks like after creating it: EnableRSS REG_DWORD 0x00000001 (1) EnableTCPA REG_DWORD 0x00000001 (1) EnableTCPChimey REG_DWORD 0x00000001 (1) There are 3 more PC's and 1 laptop in the house. 2 PCs use Win XP, 1 uses Win 7 Ultimate x64 and laptop uses Linux Ubuntu. My PC has a second OS, Linux Ubuntu, I used it to time trial both motherboards (before and after switching) and found no problems at all even after 48hrs, so it confirms it's not a hardware issue. The other PC's apart from mine are connected wirelessly. As far as I've been told, they don't experience the same issue I have. I've been trying to tackle this problem for months now and I'm frustrated to reboot my PC every time it 'loses connection '. I chatted with Asus about the issue when I still had the P5Q-E mobo, they said that they built a simular system to mine with the same mobo and said they couldn't reproduce the problem I'm having. THey even tested on other mobos with the same LAN chip and found nothing wrong. That's why I got the TURBO Pro that has a different LAN chip. Anyone got anymore suggestions??? Thanks in advance.
January 7th, 2010 9:16pm

Can anyone explain what these things are? "TCP Chimney? TCPA? RSS? autotuning disabled? The 'taskoffload' -- what's that? I'd like to know what I'm doing even if it appears to work now -- it might cause something else to break later. But i'm having problems with music disruption, under no disk load, I'm having poor performance -- much lower than XP performance...receive side scaling? shouldn't that allow for larger TCP windows? I'm looking for things that reduce latency. It seems the interpacket latency is killing me...the biggest help so far was going to 9K packets vs. the 1.5k standard. That was an immediate boost up to about 20% of my network from as little as 2.5-4% before.
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January 20th, 2010 4:03pm

Hi, Considering this issue occurs on 2 different machines, I also think this issue may be more hardware related. You may also try the following: 1. If the computers are connecting to a router, please ensure the router’s firmware is up-to-date. 2. Please run the following command in an elevated command prompt in Windows 7: netsh interface tcp set global rss=disabled netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled netsh int ip set global taskoffload=disabled 3. Disable SNP in Windows 7 by setting Registry as following: Note: Please perform a full-system backup first. [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters] EnableTCPChimney=dword:00000000 EnableTCPA=dword:00000000 EnableRSS=dword:00000000 If the keys do not exist, please create them and assign the value. An update to turn off default SNP features is available for Windows Server 2003-based and Small Business Server 2003-based computers 4. If the issue persists, please add another network adapter to this computer and see how it works. Hope this helps. Thanks. Nicholas Li - MSFT I've been reading posts on this same exact issue since the beginning of last year. Must be thousands of posts with everytone pretty much describing the same thing in different ways!! How is it that Microsoft has not fixed this issue yet? I certainly do not feel comfortable editing my registry? How safe is it to do this? My internet stops working every time I start up Utorrent. I was getting the "unidentified network" issue previously, but then updated my Intel drivers for my NIC card. Now I simply lose the internet for no apparent reason ... however Utorrent seems to cause the issue more quickly.
February 22nd, 2010 8:52pm

Hi All, I am very glad to know this worked! Your time and efforts on this issue is highly appreciated! I also hope this can benifit more of our users who meet the similar issue. In the future, if you experience any issues regarding our products or if you have any feedbacks, you are also welcome to post a new thread in our forum. It is always our pleasure to be of assistance. Thanks again. Have a great day! Nicholas Li - MSFT Shouldn;t you submit a HOTFIX rather than asking folks to edit their registries?
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February 22nd, 2010 8:54pm

Hi MattDa, Glad to know this helps. This issue doesn't occur on all NICs and I suspect this should be related to the specific device, maybe related to how it is designed or its compatibility with Windows 7. For more information, you can also contact the manufacture of the NIC. Thanks. Nicholas Li - MSFT How do you explain the fact that my Windows 7 64 pro ran perfectly with no internet drops for well over a month, then all of a sudden it begins to lose internet connection for no apparent reason and with no changes to my system. How can that be specific to the NIC? The only changes that have occurred are Windows updates.
February 22nd, 2010 9:00pm

Hi MattDa, Glad to know this helps. This issue doesn't occur on all NICs and I suspect this should be related to the specific device, maybe related to how it is designed or its compatibility with Windows 7. For more information, you can also contact the manufacture of the NIC. Thanks. Nicholas Li - MSFT How do you explain the fact that my Windows 7 64 pro ran perfectly with no internet drops for well over a month, then all of a sudden it begins to lose internet connection for no apparent reason and with no changes to my system. How can that be specific to the NIC? The only changes that have occurred are Windows updates. Note how the proposed "solution" goes like this.Change some software parameters controlling TCP.If this doesn't work, blame the hardware and replace it.On my machine this problem exists since Vista, and in all pre-release and final versions of Windows 7.Glad to hear it helped out some users, but I don't see that it addresses the root cause of this issue.Window 7 Pro 64bit. Nvidia NIC with the latest driver.
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March 3rd, 2010 3:03am

this is how you get it to work. uninstall the NIC{s}. restart windows. let windows 7 install the driver it wants to install. problem solved. i am using an EVGA 790i motherboard and i had the exact same problem as everyone who has the 790i chipset. i was dropping my connection every few mins or so. after letting windows install the driver, it worked out with no dropped connectivity. i stumbled across this as i was reinstalling 7 ultimate and windows 7 installed a working driver. one that didn't drop any connections. it was after installing the mother board chipset driver package that it was dropping connections. i just put 2 and 2 together. hope this helps someone out. regards AJ PS, im a bit bummed out that a lot of the software / drivers don't work with windows 7. i'm a PC enthusiast and i like to over clock my hardware and push it. a lot of the software we use to do this relies on a driver installation to work properly. currently windows 7 will NOT work with any of the low level drivers needed to talk to the hardware and adjust chipset values. i get the feeling that the NIC issue we all seem to be having is along the same avenue of incompatibility.
March 3rd, 2010 4:47am

im having the same issue on 32 win7, i can run the commands stated in the answer, but im having a hard time trying to figure out how to create the registry keys, i not new to editing the registry but i dont think ive ever had to create anything on it, and im not quite sure how to do it.
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March 24th, 2010 11:24pm

This is a massive bug i have been struggling with for AGES. Thank god i found this post. Nicholas Li is a microsoft employee and SHOULD BE FIXING THIS FOR EVERYONE INSTEAD OF HOPING THEY COME ACCROSS THIS FORUM POST. thanks in advance. An annoyed & angry yet releived person.
April 4th, 2010 11:14pm

This is a massive bug i have been struggling with for AGES. Thank god i found this post. Nicholas Li is a microsoft employee and SHOULD BE FIXING THIS FOR EVERYONE INSTEAD OF HOPING THEY COME ACCROSS THIS FORUM POST. thanks in advance. An annoyed & angry yet releived person. Don't be too relieved until you verify that the "fix" is working over time. By the way, which fix is it that you think is going to do the trick; you don't give a hint. I tried all proposed fixes ( besides replacing hardware ) on this and many other threads and none has ever made a dent in this. The only one that came close was to switch to Google DNS service, which significantly reduced but did not eliminate the timeouts.
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April 5th, 2010 6:26am

Hello all, I have been experiencing all of these symptoms on several machines. The problem seems to revolve around any download that is using port 80. I have 7 devices running through a Belkin wireless G router, and if the 3 Vista/7 boxes are powered off, there is no problem at all. The XP boxes and the other devices work fine. If I attempt to download anything on the Vista/7 machines the connection goes to local only on vista and drops internet browsing and downloads on the 7 box. I do find it interesting that the windows 7 machine (my gaming box) remains connected to World of Warcraft, or Diablo II even during this issue. I have been struggling with this issue for MONTHS and am almost ready to just put XP back on everything. If anyone knows of a definite cause and repair, I would be eternally grateful.
April 5th, 2010 7:27am

Apparently you need to tell Windows that you want to use the machine as a file server and that it should allocate resources accordingly. Set the following registry key to ‘1′: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\LargeSystemCache and set the following registry key to ‘3′: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters\Size After making these changes and restarting, I haven’t seen this issue arise again http://alan.lamielle.net/2009/09/03/windows-7-nonpaged-pool-srv-error-2017
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April 5th, 2010 10:57pm

Hi guys, just recently updated to windows 7 ultimate, fresh format from vista 32, all good for a day or till i next started the pc turned it on and same issue as above, i have tried everything you have all said i am running with a p5n32-e sli motherboard there are not any windows 7 drivers for the mobo it's self but i have updated the nforce drivers and its actually updated correctly as far as i can tell i have done the regedit changes i have tried everything i can, still have got no net. even installed a wireless card was working net and all, restarted after and update now thats gone also Any help would be greatly appreciated guys as i have no idea what to do now?? Would buying a new pci Network card do the trick ??
May 5th, 2010 3:41pm

You say you have no net even after a reset? First off is your NIC getting an IP address? You can find this out by clicking start, then run, then typing in cmd and hitting enter. A black command window will open, in that window type in ipconfig and hit enter. Some information will pop up in the window, you will be looking for something like this: Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection 1: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.168.65 Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.168.168 Have you tried resetting your router when you reboot? Does that give you access even for a little bit? In my particular situation mine would stop working until I disabled and reenabled the NIC. In the device manager does the NIC appear functioning properly?
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May 5th, 2010 5:46pm

I have tried everything, updated router firmware, whiping the router starting again etc... disabling nic cards re enabling them uninstalling re-installing formatting going from windows 7 back to vista back to xp and still cannot regain my net, something has screwed up when i installed 7. i flashed my bios etc disabled nic cards in bios also. Just dont know what else to do when i obtain ip automaticly i get a 169.254..... number which means im stuffed...
May 6th, 2010 3:16am

Delete the key found under: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\State Restart the system No More Disconnections.
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May 19th, 2010 3:06am

That's great, man! It's somehow working for me. At least, I have downloaded a lot with no problems.
May 21st, 2010 6:56pm

Hi, Considering this issue occurs on 2 different machines, I also think this issue may be more hardware related. You may also try the following: 1. If the computers are connecting to a router, please ensure the router’s firmware is up-to-date. 2. Please run the following command in an elevated command prompt in Windows 7: netsh interface tcp set global rss=disabled netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled netsh int ip set global taskoffload=disabled 3. Disable SNP in Windows 7 by setting Registry as following: Note: Please perform a full-system backup first. [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters] EnableTCPChimney=dword:00000000 EnableTCPA=dword:00000000 EnableRSS=dword:00000000 If the keys do not exist, please create them and assign the value. An update to turn off default SNP features is available for Windows Server 2003-based and Small Business Server 2003-based computers 4. If the issue persists, please add another network adapter to this computer and see how it works. Hope this helps. Thanks. Nicholas Li - MSFT I've tried this, Its not working for me. But I'm not sure I did it right
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November 3rd, 2010 1:04am

I am by no mean an expert on this particular subject, but it seems quite likely that the common issue that everyone is facing is the router they are using is too old or not up to scratch to talk to Windows 7 O/S, ie the router wasn't built with Windows 7 in mind, especially the 64Bit Flavour The reason I suspect this is I have a client who is using a dlink wireless router than is 3 or more years old! Recently they bought a new computer from us which has Windows 7 Home Premium 64Bit installed and connects to the dlink router via ethernet cable and yet it has constant dropouts to the point where it is unuseable for the most common of tasks ie. installing skype ends up in failure as it fails to connect to the download server.All the other devices connecting to the router are wireless and have no problem connecting to the internet even when the new system drops out. However once the system is brought back into our workshop and connects to our Linksys router, it doesn't miss a beat! The fixes that are brought to light in this thread appear to work for some people's set ups and not for others. What I'd like to know is how old and what brand is the router people are using and whether or not anyone has been able to resolve this issue with getting a new router (i'd strongly recommended avoiding cheap home user router products from companys such as Dlink or Netgear (Netgears business grade products are more reliable however) and get something more solid from say Linksys or even Netcomm.
March 11th, 2011 10:47am

Kinda need some help here guys. Have a brand new rig, X4 650, ASUS M4A87TD (realtek 8111E LAN, not nForce) and a new Asus router on Win 7 x64 pro. but i'm still getting disconnected when i'm downloading or streaming. I'm on a wired connection. when its down, i am unable to do a /release /renew but have to wait for a couple of minutes before it comes back on have tried everything forums have listed so far. 1) 1he registry edits (as above), 2) turning off IPv6, TCP scaling, offloading 3) No bonjour installed (fresh rig) 4) Both updating drivers to the latest as well as falling back to the default 5) DIfferent router (Dlink, also new) 6) new cables. 7) another PC on the same network has the same problem. also on Win 7 but similar hardware. yet another XP pc runs fine. 8) hardcoding 100/Full duplex. when the network disconnects on my win 7 machine, i know the network is still good as i can surf the net wirelessly on my mobile so this rules out a bad router (as well as point 5) during the time when its down, this is the only error on my logs: "Your computer was not assigned an address from the network (by the DHCP Server) for the Network Card with network address XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. The following error occurred: 0x79. Your computer will continue to try and obtain an address on its own from the network address (DHCP) server." Manually specifying an IP didnt help.
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March 25th, 2011 4:51am

Same conf, situation and issue as explained by dty2600 Any other idea?
April 11th, 2011 3:51am

with all the suggested workarounds, fixes, etc, can someone explain what the cause is? ie. bad driver? bad windows build? network appliance/device related issue/limitation?
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April 14th, 2011 10:11am

I have the same problem. Finally I'm connected by wire... Any new idea?
May 9th, 2011 1:46am

You're my hero! I was having this issue for years, but FINALLY it's solved. What a relief, awesome :) Thx!
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May 24th, 2011 9:52pm

well, the wireshark traces were very interesting and unbelievable. wireshark run on the Windows 7 PC shows the ping to an external IP is going out, and NOTHING at all comes back...not even an ICMP error! Yet when I try from another machine on my network to that same external IP (at the exact same time), it works just fine. Secondly, I see lots of ICMP messages from the router to my Windows 7 machine saying destination host (or port) is unreachable. These only happen during the "outage" on my windows 7 machine. the source is always my windows 7 machine. the destination is always an external website, but is often the router itself! So the router is returning an ICMP to the window7 box saying the router is unreachable. and the window 7 box is getting those packets. This is totally bizzare. explanation on the next message.
August 28th, 2011 12:11pm

Take a look at: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/390139/bugs/Win7networking.pcap and http://dl.dropbox.com/u/390139/bugs/Win7networking2.pcap look at lines 32 to 35. Note how the router (.193) is saying it is unreachable, yet we know it is reachable since it is sending the I'm unreachable message!?! Huh? It's a 2wire router. I'm wonder if there is some funny interaction with Windows 7 and the 2wire router where the 2wire sometimes doesn't like the PC, or route the return packet somewhere else...but that can't be since I'm watching for all ICMP right on the router. However, since I'm plugged into the router, I don't see other ICMP traffic on the net. I'm going to try rebooting the 2wire. ah ha!!!!!!!!! when the main router is down, my Netgear router takes over the router's IP. This is because I had the netgear as my main router at one point, then swapped it out. But I needed a mini-hub, so I thought I could just use the ports in the router for the mini hub....bad idea....the mini-hub can advertise itself as the router and your packets can then disappear down the wrong hole! Time to replace that router with a real mini hub!!!!!!! The bottom line is this: Windows 7 seems to be more sensitive about switching routers than XP. I had mistakenly configured a network where a second device was advertising it would route any non-local traffic. XP machines never noticed the bogus device. Windows 7 would occassionally switch to it since it was advertising the same IP address as my main router!! Thus, what would happen is 90% of the time my packets went to the right router. 10% of the time it went to the "other" router with the same IP that wasn't connected to anything. It would "stick" on that ethernet address for about 3 minutes, before switching off to the "real" ethernet address for the router. In short... I had a duplicate IP conflict on my router and nobody ever told me and XP never noticed.
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August 28th, 2011 12:22pm

I am having a similar problem, but mine is intermittent....Internet drops for about 2 minutes then comes back. Using Windows 7 64 bit. Brand new system. What I've noticed is that I can ping the router with no problem and network connections within my LAN work just fine. What does NOT work are packets that get routed outside my LAN. So my question to people who are having this problem is: do you notice the same thing? that when it happens, trying pinging the router vs. ping www.google.com. I'm betting you can ping the router and other machines on your LAN, but that anything that routes outside your LAN doesn't work. Next time this happens, i'm going to do a Wireshark from another machine to see what is happening with those pings. I think it will be pretty interesting.
August 29th, 2011 2:50am

well, the wireshark traces were very interesting and unbelievable. wireshark run on the Windows 7 PC shows the ping to an external IP is going out, and NOTHING at all comes back...not even an ICMP error! Yet when I try from another machine on my network to that same external IP (at the exact same time), it works just fine. Secondly, I see lots of ICMP messages from the router to my Windows 7 machine saying destination host (or port) is unreachable. These only happen during the "outage" on my windows 7 machine. the source is always my windows 7 machine. the destination is always an external website, but is often the router itself! So the router is returning an ICMP to the window7 box saying the router is unreachable. and the window 7 box is getting those packets. This is totally bizzare.
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August 29th, 2011 5:12am

Take a look at: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/390139/bugs/Win7networking.pcap look at lines 32 to 35. Note how the router is saying it is unreachable, yet we know it is reachable since it is sending the I'm unreachable message. Huh?
August 29th, 2011 5:23am

This just recently started happening on my system. I have the Evga 780i mobo and Win 7 Ultimate both since their release dates(so quite a long time). How is it the MS has ignored this issue for at least 2 years other than the fix on this thread. If it is indeed confined to nvidia nics surely they could have released a hotfix. I'm sure there are still plenty of ppl suffering this issue that have not found this thread or do not have the expertise to troubleshoot their systems and thus have no idea what is causing the lockups. I will try the above although I am wary about messing with the registry esp when the edits given have not been explained. What exactly do the reg edits do and how is it they fix the problem.
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September 22nd, 2011 12:26pm

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