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Abnormally high failure rate of PC NIC's
- Thread starter kwimedia
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- #4
Different lots, purchased over 2 years. I came in late on the scene to help this hospital solve some recurring problems and cleaned up a lot of viruses et al. issues. Laptops are all older IBM's running W95.
NIC's were not hit by a spike through the hub as they are failing intermittantly over the past 3-4 weeks. Xircom (now owned by Intel), is impossible to talk to. Spent an hour looking for an email support contact and/or appropriate phone number.
This is extremely strange..........wandered if anyone had any outside the box ideas of possibilities.
NIC's were not hit by a spike through the hub as they are failing intermittantly over the past 3-4 weeks. Xircom (now owned by Intel), is impossible to talk to. Spent an hour looking for an email support contact and/or appropriate phone number.
This is extremely strange..........wandered if anyone had any outside the box ideas of possibilities.
You mentioned viruses...have these failures occurred in timing with your clean-up efforts? I am just wondering if any removal tools you used might have removed/replaced some component that is causing this. I also had experience with a very rare virus once that was only detected by Ontrack A/V software (Symantec and Macaffee both missed it). This particular virus caused a slow erosion of the computer's communication processes until the modem stopped functioning. If you think it's possible, I will try to dig that information up for you.
First try to find that failure is in hardware or software.
To detect, try booting from DOS disk with network support and check for the connection with other working systems. Following URL may be helpful.
If it is software, try reinstalling windows again. If it is hardware, check for electrical problem in cables and earth link break (though uncommon with laptops and in a hospital but much care also leave big problems while solving all smaller ones)
To detect, try booting from DOS disk with network support and check for the connection with other working systems. Following URL may be helpful.
If it is software, try reinstalling windows again. If it is hardware, check for electrical problem in cables and earth link break (though uncommon with laptops and in a hospital but much care also leave big problems while solving all smaller ones)
These are all good suggestions. I would add swapping the "defective" Xircom cards into working pc's that have identical configurations. That way, you'll be able to quickly tell if it's the pc or the card.
A company I worked for in the past had a huge customer base that had both Xircom and 3COM cards in Dell laptops. I helped support them. To be honest, I always received excellent support from Xircom, though I can't say the same about 3COM. Xircom never asked more than 1 or 2 questions before they sent out a replacement. The failure rate wasn't that high either.
Wish I had a number for you, but I think the company had a premier account with a specialized support number...
~cdogg
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein
A company I worked for in the past had a huge customer base that had both Xircom and 3COM cards in Dell laptops. I helped support them. To be honest, I always received excellent support from Xircom, though I can't say the same about 3COM. Xircom never asked more than 1 or 2 questions before they sent out a replacement. The failure rate wasn't that high either.
Wish I had a number for you, but I think the company had a premier account with a specialized support number...
~cdogg
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein
- Thread starter
- #8
Yes it was in timing with our cleanup process or we would assume as many of the laptops had trouble connecting to the network which is why we were called in.
AV software was out of date and viruses were found, mostly sircam and nimda. A couple of NIC's failed a week after we cleaned up. I found out that 3 had failed the week before we got there.
It is hardware failure as we installed several of the NICs to other laptops in the shop to verify. We have had no more failures this past 2 weeks and everything seems to be working fine. I'm OK with that except I would like to know why for future reference and I need to explain to the client why we had to replace so many NIC's.
AV software was out of date and viruses were found, mostly sircam and nimda. A couple of NIC's failed a week after we cleaned up. I found out that 3 had failed the week before we got there.
It is hardware failure as we installed several of the NICs to other laptops in the shop to verify. We have had no more failures this past 2 weeks and everything seems to be working fine. I'm OK with that except I would like to know why for future reference and I need to explain to the client why we had to replace so many NIC's.
Well, you did mention:
NIC's were not hit by a spike through the hub as they are failing intermittantly over the past 3-4 weeks
Know that a spike can do varying damage. For instance, I've seen modems that didn't fail for weeks after being hit with a spike. Others might fail right away. It just depends on their location when the spike hits (length of cabling, etc). Some might have received a heavier load than others.
Just a possibility... ~cdogg
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein
NIC's were not hit by a spike through the hub as they are failing intermittantly over the past 3-4 weeks
Know that a spike can do varying damage. For instance, I've seen modems that didn't fail for weeks after being hit with a spike. Others might fail right away. It just depends on their location when the spike hits (length of cabling, etc). Some might have received a heavier load than others.
Just a possibility... ~cdogg
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein
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