I have two near-identical machines, one of which is a Core 2 Duo which recently started locking up. After much investigation and parts-swapping with the other machine, it seemed that whenever the machine was about to lock up, the on board lan gave out. I decided to disable it in the BIOS and install a spare Edimax card. Strangely, the lockups appear to have stopped.

Is it possible for the onboard lan to freeze the machine?

Maybe somthing isnt actually working properly on the LAN? some chip getting to hot maybe? or somthing like that?

I could imagine it could cause a problem yeah

Aye sounds like it maybe an overheating problem? Get a nice little heatsink and stick it on the chip before you ditch the board.

Now to the fun question, how to stick it on - anyone remember mixing Arctic Silver & Superglue? Showing my age now haha.

was there not an AS epoxy?

Also try reinstalling the driver totally.

i had the exact same problem

except i disabled the LAN connection in windows because it wasnt being used and it seemed to stop

i am also running core 2 duo, and i seemed to have the problem when running live messenger... but i dont anymore

Quote from: SeriousAlso try reinstalling the driver totally.

Nice idea, but this was also occurring in Linux (its a dual-booter) as well as before Windows even got the chance to boot up, so that eliminates the driver idea



I hadnt really thought about the chip overheating, hmm. The motherboard is a Gigabyte 965P-DS3. Supposed to be rock stable?

I should also have mentioned that the machine in question had an Enermax Liberty 400W PSU, which sometimes when being switched on would go pop.

The other machine has the 500W version and does not exhibit this problem. Maybe a dodgy switch?

yea that could be it^^

but you said that when you disabled the onboard LAN it stopped happening?

strange

Correct, other than having to re-activate windows xp (because of all the memory stick swapping and the removal and replacement of components), just switching it off and using a PCI lan card has (touch wood) seemed to fix it. Hopefully.