Cannot boot with new network card

[Graham]

I'm baffled and hoping someone can help.

I recently purchased two Belkin F5D5005ea Gigabit Ethernet cards. I installed one card in each of two computers. One card works well. The computer containing the other card will not power on. I have tried:

• Both cards in the failing machine.
  
• Putting the card in each of the three PCI slots.
  
• Removing all of the other PCI cards in the machine.
  
• Removing the steel bracket to ensure that the card seats properly.
  
• Upgrading the motherboard BIOS to the latest version.
  

The symptoms are the same in every case. Pressing the power-on button does nothing.

After my failure with the network card, I was able to successfully install a PCI RAID card and two hard drives in the machine. This suggests that it is not a power supply problem.

The motherboard is an Intel D845GVSR.

Thanks

Graham

[Captcol]

Is the testing done with the network cable attached, I had a problem using a gigabit card and cable connected to a 100meg switch that stumped me for ages. Have you tried disabling any onboard network adapters in the bios?

clutching at straws here really, hopefully someone with more knowledge will turn up shortly. Does seem very strange though.

[Graham]

Is the testing done with the network cable attached, I had a problem using a gigabit card and cable connected to a 100meg switch that stumped me for ages. Have you tried disabling any onboard network adapters in the bios?

clutching at straws here really, hopefully someone with more knowledge will turn up shortly. Does seem very strange though.

Network cable in or out makes no difference.

I haven't tried disabling the onboard network ... I agree that it seems like a straw and a very thin one ... I will try it though.

Thanks

[bgowland]

More an observation than a suggestion/answer, but my original mobo for my GB-PVR system was an Asus one with a VIA chipset. When I bought a PVR500 (having happily run with a PVR350 for several months), the machine refused to boot when I put the PVR500 in. It turned out I wasn't the only one and any mobo (not just Asus) with the same VIA Southbridge exhibited the same or similar behaviour with PVR500 cards. Ironically I replaced the Asus mobo with an Intel D845-based one to fix the problem.

So it could well be a conflict of chipsets - it's pretty rare in my experience but can happen. Perhaps disabling the onboard NIC may help after all although, if I remember correctly, the problem with the PVR500 and the particular VIA Southbridge was something to do with the onboard SATA interface which the Southbridge handled.

Cheer,
Brian

[pBS]

i would agree it's probably the onboard nic card, make sure to turn off any PXE or boot rom for the nic, and be sure to reset or 'clear' ESCD in bios, it is needed for bios to re-detect plugnplay devices before windows gets it's chance to...

also, if you're having this problem the "use pnp from bios or OS" probably needs to be changed, normally set to 'OS', but you need to set it to 'bios' so bios will sort out new hardware and boot..
[many think setting it to OS is correct,it just skips bios detection completely,windows always detects after anyways]
hope that helps....bios is always the most undocumented thing out there...

[Graham]

Disabled onboard network ... nothing.

PnP is not set to OS and never was.

I have also given it a good kicking ... nothing.

I can feel a trip to shop ...

Thanks to all.

[Graham]

Ho hum!

The problem is solved but it is all very odd ...

I have been running the relevant machine for three or four years without any problems (including a well used Firewire card in a PCI slot).

I installed the network card and the machine would not power on. I removed the card and the machine would power on.

I put the network card to one side. I then installed a new RAID card in a PCI slot and installed two new hard drives. This all went well and there were no problems.

All else having failed ... I bought a new power supply and, lo and behold, the machine now powers on with the network card in it.

The original power supply was a 300 watt budget job and the new supply is a 600 watt branded model. I suspect that the problem was caused by the "budget" element of the original supply and not because it was 300 watt. It may be that it was providing a dodgy voltage or somesuch.

In any event, all is now good.

Thanks for your efforts.

Graham

[Captcol]

Good work on the process of elimination, funny that it would power a raid card with two extra dries but not a nic ... glad its working though

[zehd]

That's 'cause 10 times the speed means ten times more power consumption, errr... no that's not right....