Hi Mark,

Have you checked in the device manager to see if Windows XP needs a driver
for it? It is not uncommon for XP to not have support for various hardware
devices. That is what the ASUS CD would be for, to load drivers and inf data
for the particular hardware on the motherboard. Onboard NIC's are commonly
NOT supported by the drivers built-in to the Windows CD's.

So by all means, follow the instructions to load the drivers off the ASUS
CD. It is probably as easy as popping the CD in the drive, and following the
onscreen instructions that come up (it should be an autorun CD).

For example, my PC has an ASUS P4P800-E deluxe with a Marvell Gbit NIC, and
the Windows CD does not have a driver for it. I had to load the drivers from
the supplied CD.

Russ Poffenberger
[log in to unmask] 

-----Original Message-----
From: Personal Computer Hardware discussion List
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mark Shaw
Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2006 3:24 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [PCBUILD] Asus A8N-SLI and onboard ethernet


Hello,

I'm buiilding a new system: Asus A8N-SLI  (socket 939), Athlon64 (3700MHz+),
and a fresh install of XP Professional 64.

XP does not see the onboard ethernet. (It DOES see the onboard 1394,
interestingly enough, even though there's nothing on it.) The connection and
activity LEDs near the ethernet jack indicate a good
(100bits/s) connection, and activity, so I have to believe the h/w is okay
(or do I?  it occurs to me that those LEDs might not mean much from the
cable inbound....). The cable modem and router are fine; my older desktop is
running off of them without issue.

I've gone through the "connect to the internet" wizard (for always-on
broadband) and have poked around in Hardware Manager a bit - can't find
anything there.

Note that when I installed XP the ethernet port was disabled. I have since
enabled it in the BIOS and rebooted. Also I have not yet installed anything
from the ASUS CD - I want to get a clean update of XP first.

The ethernet port is an NVIDIA design, but that's about all I know about it.
I understand there have been some issues with these - should I perhaps just
forget the onboard ethernet and go out and get myself a NIC?

Thanks....

Mark Shaw
Allen, TX

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