Need help with new 3Com Ethernet Card : (

[Aleaxander]

I bought the 3Com EtherLink 10/100 Mbps PCI Network Interface Card (Model No. 3c905c-tx-m) and it not only did not work on my system (Duron 700 with Asus A7V motherboard), but it then caused my original 3Com card to stop working correctly. With the new 3Com card, I could not even access the internet through my Linksys 4 port router using DHCP. When I returned the original 3Com card to the system, I could at least access the net, but I could no longer browse newsgroups, and the internet games I play seemed to slow down (this could just be in my mind, but Asheron's call seems to be logging out and in very slowly, and others that play said that they have not noticed any change lately)...
I tried many times to get the new card to work (uninstall, then reinstall, uninstall in save mode, then reinstall, uninstall dail-up networking [who knows? maybe this would do something?] then reinstall, try all of the above after running pre-installation program on 3Com Cd included with card), and then many times to restore the original card back to proper working condition (see list above, and note that registry seems to still have listing for pre-install program), but to no avail. Still no internet connection with new card, and no newsgroup connection with old when set for DHCP server with Linksys router. The frustrating thing is that all the other computers on my network still worked, so the problem does not seem to be with the Linksys router. Something changed with my Duron.
The one thing I noticed that changed in Network Neighborhood (Win 98 SE, did I mention that?) is that the TCP/IP protocol no longer says the name of my ethernet card (regardless of the new one or old one). It used to say something like, "TCP/IP Bound to 3COM 3C905" (or something like that), and now it just lists TCP/IP. The ethernet cards themselves do in fact say that they our bound to the TCP/IP, but there is no listing under the TCP/IP protocol itself. I don't know if this is telling as to what is wrong, but if anyone has any idea, I'd appreciate the help in trouble shooting this.

I bought a 3Com card because I was very happy with my original one that I've had for the last two years. It felt like a work-horse, and never had any problems. I bought a new one because I wanted to use the Wake On Lan feature of the motherboard so I could have my computer on all the time, but keep it basically off unless I accessed my ftp site (then it would theoretically wake up, magic!). This has been very frustrating, and a search of their site has resulted in no leads on how to fix this problem. I tried to call their customer support, only to recieve a message that I should call between 8 and 6 (it was about 2pm on Sat, so I guess they mean weekdays). Unfortunately, I am in the video game business and don't usually make it home anywhere near 6pm...

Any ideas? Would very much appreciate any insights into my problem. By the way, the cable router is connected to a cable modem, but like I said, the other computers on the network are still working fine. I did eventually play around with asigning static IP addresses to all the computers, but that did not change anything, so I went back to running the router as a DHCP server.

-Aleaxander

[Aleaxander]

A bit of further information (as if I have not given enough), I am still able to do file-sharing with the original 3Com card, but when I installed the new one, in none of the dozens of attempts made at getting it running was I able to get the other computers on the network to file-share.

-Aleaxander

[Aleaxander]

Someone e-mailed me saying that they were having the same problem, and since I had worked with 3Com to find a solution, I thought I should post my response (and hopefully the fix) for anyone else with this problem to find. The only problem I'm having with my system now is accessing Newgroups, so if anyone reads this and can recommend a fix, I'd appreciate it. I think the 3Com Preinstall program replaced some Microsoft network stuff that may have done the damage.... My e-mail:

I spoke to 3Com this morning, and they had me download and install the latest Via 4 in 1 drivers from www.viatech.com. I then downloaded the latest drivers from 3Com for the 3c905C-TX-M Nic card I bought, not the first drivers on the list, but the latest (I believe 5.3) from lower down. I extracted these two (disk 1 and 2) to new folders (3Com1 and 3Com2) on my root directory (C:/) as the tech support guy said that having them on the desktop could create problems (probably due to long file names that Dos gets confused by). Then I was ready to go!

I installed the 4 in 1 drivers (make sure you extract the zip file to a folder, as you may need them later, also make sure that they extract correctly as there are sub-folders that need to be in there), and rebooted. Win98 SE found new hardware and installed drivers, but one of them I had to browse to the folder I extracted to in order to find the correct driver.

Then I shutdown my computer and put in the ethernet card. Started it up, and Win98 found new hardware. I told it to look in the 3Com1 folder for the drivers, it found them, and it installed fine.

After that, everything worked. All I did after that was remove the old network card info from Network Neighborhood (I had already removed the Nic card itself, just in case there was a conflict with the new card).

The tech support guy said that there was a program in the 3Com2 folder that would allow me to disable the bios on the card which pops up when you boot. I haven't tried that yet, as the bios only runs for a few seconds. The bios on the card is for allowing your computer to boot up from the network, which I will never need.

So it is working. Something is still wrong with my system, as I cannot access newsgroups, but every other program is fine, so I don't know what else it could be. Reinstalling Forte Free Agent (the news program) did not work, and I just can't figure it out because one of the other computers on the network, with the same configuration as this one, works just fine. I may just do a clean install of Win98 (which I don't want to do) to see if that fixes it.

Note: the Preinstall program that comes with the 3Com card does not need to be run, and the Tech Support guy at 3Com highly recommended NOT running it (though I did a few weeks ago, so perhaps that is the problem I'm having with reading newsgroups now...).

I think that the K7V is using the Via 133 chipset, but make sure that is true before you install the latest Via 4 in One Drivers. I'll post this to the forum on SharkyExtreme so that anyone else having this problem can find it.

Hope this helps!

-Aleaxander