Got a really strange problem in our office. From time to time the whole network would become unresponsive and after a few minutes of this it becomes impossible to communicate over the LAN.
Example. When you try and ping another workstation or server you will get some degree of packet loss and / or unknown host and / or destination unreachable errors.
This has gone on for a few weeks, but never lasted very long and didn't cause too much disruption and we we're too busy to track it down until today when the whole LAN stopped working.
We had a real pain switching off all the servers and unplugging everything from the LAN this afternoon to try and locate the problem. We left the DSL modem, Firewall and DHCP server running and with a laptop wired into the LAN we then re attached each piece of equipment until we lost the ability to communicate over the LAN e.g. It became impossible to access the Internet or ping other network devices.
The source of the problem was a Dell workstation (which was turned off at the time). We disconnected the cable from PC to the LAN and connectivity was restored almost instantly.
Strange things is once the LAN was back to normal and up and running we re connected the PC (still switched off) and within minutes the LAN was fubar.
We then switched the PC on and the LAN connectivity returned!!!
All the drivers on the PC are standard, its just an office workstation nothing fancy, its running Vista Ultimate SP1
So, the LAN doesn’t work with the PC off, but does work when its on!! What would cause this behavior and what could bring it on now? We’ve changed the network card as a precaution but we have many workstations like this one and don’t want to buy each of them network cards.
Example. When you try and ping another workstation or server you will get some degree of packet loss and / or unknown host and / or destination unreachable errors.
This has gone on for a few weeks, but never lasted very long and didn't cause too much disruption and we we're too busy to track it down until today when the whole LAN stopped working.
We had a real pain switching off all the servers and unplugging everything from the LAN this afternoon to try and locate the problem. We left the DSL modem, Firewall and DHCP server running and with a laptop wired into the LAN we then re attached each piece of equipment until we lost the ability to communicate over the LAN e.g. It became impossible to access the Internet or ping other network devices.
The source of the problem was a Dell workstation (which was turned off at the time). We disconnected the cable from PC to the LAN and connectivity was restored almost instantly.
Strange things is once the LAN was back to normal and up and running we re connected the PC (still switched off) and within minutes the LAN was fubar.
We then switched the PC on and the LAN connectivity returned!!!
All the drivers on the PC are standard, its just an office workstation nothing fancy, its running Vista Ultimate SP1
So, the LAN doesn’t work with the PC off, but does work when its on!! What would cause this behavior and what could bring it on now? We’ve changed the network card as a precaution but we have many workstations like this one and don’t want to buy each of them network cards.
