Help sort network issue...

[conroejoe]

Guys -
I'm really trying to like Vista but the biggest problem I have is the Vista machine stops communicating with my network. I have reinstalled Vista x64 so many times and no matter what it happens eventually. Thinking maybe it was something to do with driver signing last night I wiped and installed Vista 32-bit on the machine. I went to the network copied some stuff from XP, closed the network window. Opened it again and my one XP machines were gone, Vista was screwed again. So I hit map network. It shows both XP machines. I can ping both XP machines. The XP machines can all still see each other (2 more desktops and 1 laptop). I disable and re-enable network discovery in Vista which has fixed this in the past, nothing. I disabled the firewall, nothing. I rebooted the router and switch, nothing. I rebooted the same PC into XP - works fine. Booted back to Vista still nothing. I cannot use Vista if I cannot keep it on the network.

So I need suggestions...this was a clean install with absolutely nothing but Vista 32, the Intel p35 chipset driver and THAT WAS IT, nothing more. I had disabled UAC. As for everything else, the install was about 10 mins old.

Here is what I've tried...

- I have tried multiple installs of Vista x64 and x86
- Firewall on / off
- Network discovery enable / disable / enable again
- Network location is selected as HOME
- Different ethernet cards - onboard AND PCI
- Different patch cables Cat5e, Cat6
- No 3rd party apps or firewalls even installed
- able to ping other machines even when I cannot get to them from Vista

I'm sure some of you will accuse the Switch or the Router, however my XP machines can still see each other and move files just fine even when the Vista machine cannot. On the same PC runninig Vista I can swap HDs over and boot XP and it can see the network. I have NEVER had this problem with XP on the same machine with either of the 2 NICs I have had in it. Also, last night I went as far as rebooting the Switch and Router and Vista still could not see it.

The only Windows feature I had disabled was UAC, wondering if that has anything to do with it.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd appreciate it.

[conroejoe]

I found this article on IPv6 issues, I may try to disable IPv6 and see if that fixes it.

http://www.searchnetworking.com.au/topics/article.asp?DocID=1265994

[nekrosoft13]

do you use static or DHCP?

have you tried actually using the latest marvell driver that was released few days ago?

[conroejoe]

do you use static or DHCP?

have you tried actually using the latest marvell driver that was released few days ago?


I gave up on the Marvell cause it had issues with Gigabit connectivity. It would like to connect at 100MB. That was another issue entirely with ASUS P5B-d and P5K-e using an older Marvell chip. I now have a Realtek based PCI GB nic installed. I never have a problem connecting at 1GB now, however I did go through all the Marvell drivers and that never fixed the issues either though.

I've tried both DHCP and static addressing.

[conroejoe]

I've reinstalled Vista x86 and SP1 final build 18000. Disabled Firewall, IPv6. Still losing connection to my XP PCs.

The ONLY fix remaining is to reboot Vista PC.

[nekrosoft13]

when you loose connection from vista to xp, does xp still see vista?

have you tried updating xp machines to sp3? since sp3 updated network portions of xp to be more like vista.

[conroejoe]

when you loose connection from vista to xp, does xp still see vista?

have you tried updating xp machines to sp3? since sp3 updated network portions of xp to be more like vista.

Well here is another issue. You cannot share a folder in Vista that I can write to. I have googled and followed the tutorials.

Has anyone been able to actually open a shared folder from a Vista PC? Cause I cannot get it to actually become writable from another PC. I see it shared, but it always gives me an error when I try to write to it.

To answer your question Nekro...
I cannot get XP to write to Vista no matter what, but it does seee the shared folders in the network.

I have not updated this PC to SP3 as it's my 24/7 server. I cannot afford to run beta software on this machine. The XP PCs still can all see each other and I can move files from each of them. The only PC still dropping off is the Vista one. However, running XP the same machine has no problems.

[nekrosoft13]

i can share folders on vista just fine. all my shares are hidden (with rather complicated name and $). With network permissions set to everyone to full access. Since i'm the only one that knows the names.

Also have three directories on server 2008 RC1 (same as Vista SP1 RC1 build 668) shared with custom user name only accessible by my Xbox Media Center.

[conroejoe]

i can share folders on vista just fine. all my shares are hidden (with rather complicated name and $). With network permissions set to everyone to full access. Since i'm the only one that knows the names.

Also have three directories on server 2008 RC1 (same as Vista SP1 RC1 build 668) shared with custom user name only accessible by my Xbox Media Center.
'

I'm trying to just publically share one folder like you can in XP. Its shared with full write access to everyone but none of the PCs have write access to it.

[conroejoe]

This shows basically what I was trying to do, sharing the XP way...

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/how-to-share-a-folder-the-xp-way-in-windows-vista/

[OliverRedfox]

I'm sure some of you will accuse the Switch or the Router, however my XP machines can still see each other and move files just fine even when the Vista machine cannot.
I won't accuse the switch, but I am curious about the router make & model. It has nothing to do with the router being bad, it has to do with UPnP. Network discovery in Vista is the same as UPnP in XP. My router doesn't always play nice with UPnP so I turned off the setting for it in the router (turning it off the OS didn't fix some issues). So does the router have UPnP turned on or off in its configuration (either way, try the opposite setting to see if it helps).

[conroejoe]

I won't accuse the switch, but I am curious about the router make & model. It has nothing to do with the router being bad, it has to do with UPnP. Network discovery in Vista is the same as UPnP in XP. My router doesn't always play nice with UPnP so I turned off the setting for it in the router (turning it off the OS didn't fix some issues). So does the router have UPnP turned on or off in its configuration (either way, try the opposite setting to see if it helps).

Even though I dont have an issue with XP??

Netgear 614 - router

netgear 4 port GB switch


I ordered and have coming tomorrow a D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N Wireless-N Gigabit Broadband Router

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5460495

[OliverRedfox]

Even though I dont have an issue with XP??
yup, even thought you don't have an issue with XP. UPnP is funny like that. I don't know why, it just is.

[conroejoe]

I won't accuse the switch, but I am curious about the router make & model. It has nothing to do with the router being bad, it has to do with UPnP. Network discovery in Vista is the same as UPnP in XP. My router doesn't always play nice with UPnP so I turned off the setting for it in the router (turning it off the OS didn't fix some issues). So does the router have UPnP turned on or off in its configuration (either way, try the opposite setting to see if it helps).


it was on, it's disabled now. I'll see if I still have issues.

[conroejoe]

By God, I think that may have done it. Vista no longer sees the router as a device. I just see my shared PCs and as of yet it is still seeing them!! So no one else has had this problem before?? Wtf?

[Drolfrawd]

I've reinstalled Vista x86 and SP1 final build 18000. Disabled Firewall, IPv6. Still losing connection to my XP PCs.

The ONLY fix remaining is to reboot Vista PC.


Have you tried looking at the properties of the nic card / power management/
allow turn off?

[OliverRedfox]

Like I said, I had similar problems. One of my Vista machines wouldn't recognize the network or allow internet access after resuming from standby (even though it still had a valid IP address). My other XP & Vista machines didn't have this issue. I tried different network drivers with no success. After a bunch of digging around, I came across info that UPnP could be the issue. I turned it off on my router and my issues were fixed. :) In theory, UPnP is a nice idea, but it lacks a bunch in practical implementation.

[conroejoe]

Have you tried looking at the properties of the nic card / power management/
allow turn off?

yea, we are talking about copying network files on minute and it being off the network the next. Wasn't a sleep feature.

[conroejoe]

Like I said, I had similar problems. One of my Vista machines wouldn't recognize the network or allow internet access after resuming from standby (even though it still had a valid IP address). My other XP & Vista machines didn't have this issue. I tried different network drivers with no success. After a bunch of digging around, I came across info that UPnP could be the issue. I turned it off on my router and my issues were fixed. :) In theory, UPnP is a nice idea, but it lacks a bunch in practical implementation.


Yeah, well that nailed it. I was on for about 2 hours last night and it never dropped off the network. I have fought with this since Vista came out. I would just give up and move on to my XP drive. Thanks for the suggestion. At this point that looks to be the culprit and my issues with the Vista PC falling off the network are fixed. I am sure there have to be people elsewhere out there with this issue. I have that new DLINK EXTREME 655 coming today so I may have to disable uPNP on that too. Thanks again!

Now if only I could get my 10% performance loss back in games lol.

[nekrosoft13]

try d-link with upnp on, this way you could check if it might be netgear issue in their firmware.

note: make sure you update that dlink, that model had couple firmware updates.

[conroejoe]

try d-link with upnp on, this way you could check if it might be netgear issue in their firmware.

note: make sure you update that dlink, that model had couple firmware updates.


Well using the latest firmware on the netgear. But upnp worked fine with my XP PCs, so its still gotta be something that Vista is doing with upnp that was causing the problem. Disabling it altogether seems to have fixed it.

Updating the firmware will be the first thing I do, always is. That way if it gets fried out of the box I can still RMA it lol

There have been a bunch of fw releases for it:
http://www.dlink.com/products/support.asp?pid=530&sec=1#firmware

[conroejoe]

I found a bunch of articles on how upnp and Vista can be detrimental to your network. After testing last night I can confirm this. Max downloads on Vista were like 100 kb/s. After I disabled uPNP Vista downloads went up to 1.2MB/sec while I was downloading the UT3 1.1 patch at the same time I was downloading the Crysis patch at 800 kb/sec.

Also, from what I've read Vista and uPNP in routers does the same thing with many brands. I found references to Dlink, Linksys and Netgear all needing to disable uPNP, looks like Vista is just killing the network with uPNP traffic. Its not the routers, it's the flood of uPNP traffic from Vista.

http://itsvista.com/2007/02/could-vista-be-slowing-your-entire-network/

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=823654&SiteID=1


I swear sometimes MS is just so stupid. They didn't come across this in any testing? I wonder if this was also responsible for network speeds being so bad also. So in SP1 they could've just changed the uPNP network traffic and increased network and internet speeds - now you've gotta wonder just what they did in the network code to speed up the network from RTM to SP1.