Gigabyte GA-M51GM-S2G network problem

[RWIndiana]

Hi everyone. I got this nice little board at Merc's suggestion (thanks, btw). I only have one complaint. I am dual-booting with Windows and Linux, and when I boot into Linux everything works fine, the LAN makes connection and does . . . what it's supposed to do. Then if I restart into Windows, it still works fine. However, if I reboot into Linux after being in Windows, it makes a connection to the network but doesn't actually *work*. I have to cut the power to the whole thing in order for the network card to work in Linux again.

It's rather annoying. Any help?

 

[mubs]

Latest motherboard BIOS and latest network drivers for both Win & Linux?

 

[RWIndiana]

The motherboard BIOS is fairly recent. I believe it is May of 2006. I don't know if I technically have the *latest* drivers for Linux, but I do have kernel 2.6.16. Maybe it would help to uninstall the nvidia drivers that came with the motherboard for Windows?

 

[P5-133XL]

While, the Windows drivers may be putting the NIC in a state that the Linux drivers aren't dealing with, it is the responsibility of the Linux drivers to initialize the card, regardless of what state they were in before. The Linux drivers are failing that responsibility -- Check them first.

 

[Mercutio]

The Marvell LAN chip on that board should be fine under Linux. I can't say I've tried that specific board, but Marvell's chips have been supported very well.

Linux doesn't really have "drivers" for LAN hardware so much as loaded kernel modules that are precompiled by the distro's management. I guess it's possible that you have some newer revision of whatever chip than the drivers support, but networking hardware is pretty much the hardware that Linux supports better than anything else.

That's not very helpful in this case, but I guess you could recompile your kernel + modules or try another Linux distro to see if the behavior continues and is specifically associated with Linux.