DFI LANParty nF4 Ultra-D: Dead NIC

Hi all,

I fitted one of the above boards to my system last Thursday and up until now everything's been running fine. When I got up this morning, it would appear that NIC port #1 is no longer working. I tried rebooting my system (and for good measure, the cable modem) but to no avail. The LEDs adjacent to the port don't light up when there's a plug in there. Windows (XP Home edition) shows the error as 'a Network Cable has been unplugged'. Everything works fine on port #2 (so far, touch wood) so obviously I've switched over to that.

Would anyone else have experienced this and if so, is there a fix/workaround? I'm swithering whether or not to RMA it as I only need one NIC although I'm nervous that the only only working left will follow a similar demise.

Have you ruled out a driver issue?

I haven't... yet.

I'd just noticed it as I was heading out to work this morning. The reason why I posted about it is just in case someone knew of a quick fix or if indeed it was a common issue. However, I'll try to remove and re-install the drivers tonight.

Quick question for anyone who knows: Is there any difference between the Yukon Marvell Port (port #1) and the nForce 4 Ethernet Port (port #2) in terms of performance/reliability/stability? Is there any real reason why the board comes with two ethernet ports made by 2 different manufacturers?

One cause of 'driver corruption' that I can come up with was that I left my PC running Prime95 overnight. AFAIK, this only runs between the CPU and RAM. Could this cause a corruption with my ethernet port?