Strange reboot on network change.

GHoosdum

Due to the fact that drivers for my printer and WiFi card don't exist, I had to scrap my migration to XP 64-bit.

I just freshly reinstalled XP Professional. I installed the OS with SP2, then the chipset drivers (nForce 3), then the video driver, then the driver for the wireless card. After I connected to the wireless network, I was left with the "A network cable is unplugged" icon in the tray for my wired NIC that's built into the mobo. In order to get rid of the icon, I tried to go into Network Connections and disable this connection.

The instant that I click "Disable" the PC reboots, without disabling the connection. It does this every single time I try to disable the connection.

Ideas?

Armo

is "automaticly restart on system failure" still checked in the advanced system properties, it might be blue screening and restarting. perhaps the TCP IP stack got fubard during instalation

profdlp

That's a great suggestion, Armo.

If the MB has dual Network Contollers onboard you might try disabling the one you don't use in the BIOS and uninstalling it from Network Connections and Device Manager in Safe Mode. That's what I did after I got sick and tired of that "...unplugged..." warning staring me in the face.

GHoosdum

Armo, you hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately, the network driver was so FUBAR'd that I had to reinstall the OS againto fix the issue, because the PC would BSOD every time I tried to rebuild the TCP stack, uninstall the driver, or update/reinstall the driver for the network card or any of the other nVidia platform drivers. I couldn't even disable the device in device manager because it said something like "device cannot be disabled as it may be required for machine boot" or some such.

prof - you're right in that I could have disabled it in BIOS, although it doesn't have dual NICs on the mobo.The network card I use right now is a PCI 802.11g card since the internet connection comes in all the way on the other side of the house - just to be as inconvenient as possible. In other words, I could have followed your suggestion if I hadn't started reinstalling the OS before I checked the thread again.

It's fixed now, thank goodness. Thank you, Armo and prof, for your great suggestions.

And all it took was a complete reinstall of the OS.

profdlp

I know it's often overkill, but if I get a major choke soon after a format/reinstall I usually just take a mulligan. Now, once I've spent weeks tweaking everything it's a different story.