[Solved] Realtek network card and Vista

[GrofLuigi]

I'm really trying hard to like Vista. Really.

Situation:

Laptop with XP 32bit on it, chugging happily for quite some time. Let's try Vista on it. Make another partition, two totally independent installs. The newcomer is Vista home premium SP1, 64bit, not vlited. Downloaded and installed all available windows updates. All drivers install successfully.

So, what's the problem?

As far as my troubleshooting skills go, Vista doesn't know how to shut down (electrically) the network card. It's this one (RTL8102E).

Why do I think so?

If I reboot FROM Vista to either XP or Vista, the card isn't recognized and Windows installs another driver for it. OK, big deal. Let it. But afterwards it still says "network cable unplugged" (and it's plugged, believe me) in Vista or "this device could not start" in XP. If I reboot another time, still no luck.

XP can reboot all the time and has no problems. Vista can shutdown, sleep or hibernate, but not reboot. If I never use the reboot function, just shut down and power up with the power button, all is fine.

Microsoft's driver included in Vista doesn't work. Realtek's XP driver too (in Vista; works in XP).

Another thing I noticed it doesn't shut down the SPDIF output (combo jack on the front for headphones, red light freaked me out ).

Sooo... Can I teach it somehow to behave? Any method is acceptable.

GL

Edited March 13, 2009 by GrofLuigi

[CoffeeFiend]

Rather strange. I have 2 Vista boxes with Realtek Gigabit NICs. One "Realtek RTL8168B/8111B Family PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC" (Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R) and one "Realtek RTL8168C(P)/8111C(P) Family PCI-E GBE NIC" (Asus M3A78-EM). Both never had such issues and just worked out of the box without any fiddling whatsoever. Might be that specific model you got which has driver issues, hard to tell from so little.

SPDIF wise, that's normal AFAIK, unless you somehow disable the output (I use mine, so haven't tried).

[GrofLuigi]

Device ID:

PCIVEN_10EC&DEV_8136&SUBSYS_11361734&REV_02 - Normal

PCIVEN_10EC&DEV_8136&SUBSYS_813610EC&REV_02 - After Vista has done its thing with it

In the realtek's driver inf, 1st is marked as FSC (correctly). Second, I think, is the generic entry for all devices.

SPDIF - I installed Realtek's (again) audio driver and it shuts the red light down. Like in XP. Like it should be.

GL

hard to tell from so little.

There's not much to tell, XP works. That is the driver. The only other difference is 64bit vs 32bit.

GL

[Tripredacus]

Is the 8102 similar to the 8201 controller? We've had problems with the 8201, because we found it was a virtual or emulated device. We cannot get it to work properly in any PE environment, but haven't had any problems in regular Windows (either). These are rare controllers for us, but we usually have to set up those machines using another NIC. I know you can't really do that with a notebook tho.

[submix8c]

Foolish thought (? I don't have Vista at all, but...) try comparing the contents of the INF's. If XP uses the same driver for either/or, then maybe Vista will if you modify the INF to correspond to XP. Just a thought... may hose the whole deal, but hey, whatever works....

[puntoMX]

I would try a few things:

- Update the BIOS

- Disable everything in Power Management in the properties tab of the NIC

- manually install the latest chipset drivers

- Set BIOS power functions to S3 or if it was already on S3 you could try S1

As you can see, I give it a little chance that it might be a driver problem...

[cluberti]

Are we sure it isn't a driver autodetect problem in Vista? What would happen if you force 10 or 100MB and force the duplex mode? Also, if it finds a new NIC on every reboot, that would potentially be a BIOS issue, as devices are scanned during boot and compared to the preexisting device table (assuming it's not a sysprep reboot) - Windows would only install a new device if there was no previous device, or if the BIOS reported it with a different hardware information set than it did the previous boot.

I'd say there's a problem with this particular driver and Vista's different boot and shutdown behaviors (XP's driver model and boot/shutdown procedures differ from Vista's pretty radically). I would make sure you have the latest BIOS from the motherboard vendor (and make sure there are no Vista firmware issues with the vendor's BIOS), make sure you have the latest Realtek x64 WDF 1.0 driver (not WDM, but WDF), and after that I would try to pester the mobo manufacturer or Realtek (if it's on the motherboard, Realtek won't help you) into getting it to work properly in Vista.

[GrofLuigi]

It's a laptop, there's not much to change in BIOS. It's the latest BIOS, btw.

I've toggled ALL options on the driver's advanced tab (one at a time + in groups*) as well as 'allow windows to turn this device off to save power' on the last tab). No change.

Thank you all for your answers, you reminded me that what I haven't tried yet is the laptop manufacturer's driver (because it's from 2007). I abandoned their drivers altogether because for the wireless it offered me Intel driver, while the card is realtek (found from the hardware ID).

I'll try it anyway, maybe there is some customization indeed. I'll report soon.

And it does change the hardware ID, that's why I posted them.

* "groups" = power management; Wake on Lan; offload; speed/duplex

GL

[GrofLuigi]

Update: Installed driver from laptop manufacturer - no change. It's just older version of Realtek's driver.

Removed all third party drivers and tried just with Vista's inbuilt driver. Same behavior (that's why I asked here in the first place).

If I do shut down, everything's fine. With reboot, installs another instance and creates network connection # 2. During that session, it works. If I perform another reboot, doesn't work. Says 'network cable unplugged'. If I start the troubleshooter, it doesn't believe I've plugged the cable. Says something like: plug the cable again.

I'm still refraining from cursing Vista, but I'm on the edge...

I don't think anything is wrong with the hardware, because I can reboot as much as I want with XP. And it has worked for months. LAN, Internet, no problem ever.

GL

[cluberti]

I'd say it's a Vista problem with the BIOS, honestly - the BIOS isn't doing something on a reboot that it is when XP does a reboot, there's no reason for the card to be found again unless the BIOS presents it differently after the reboot.

[GrofLuigi]

I'd say it's a Vista problem with the BIOS, honestly - the BIOS isn't doing something on a reboot that it is when XP does a reboot, there's no reason for the card to be found again unless the BIOS presents it differently after the reboot.

I'll try loading defaults, but I would really hate to go back to older BIOS... I'll wait for now.

GL

[puntoMX]

Just another thing: Try to install the drivers in safemode.

You can curse Vista for it, but that laptop seems to be designed for XP. And there is always the computer manufacturer in between .

[GrofLuigi]

Just another thing: Try to install the drivers in safemode.

You can curse Vista for it, but that laptop seems to be designed for XP. And there is always the computer manufacturer in between .

It was designed for Vista actually. Bought without OS.

GL

[CoffeeFiend]

I'd say it's a Vista problem with the BIOS, honestly - the BIOS isn't doing something on a reboot that it is when XP does a reboot, there's no reason for the card to be found again unless the BIOS presents it differently after the reboot.

I'm starting to believe it's really that.

Googling for "RTL8102E +problem" or similar searches doesn't seem to return any Vista-related issues (it's almost all Linux problems). So the NIC chip doesn't seem to be problematic, nor the drivers. Redetecting already installed hardware is a strange thing too.

Either ways, if it doesn't work at all with Vista, and it's claimed to work with it, I'd be inquiring about a RMA.

[puntoMX]

It was designed for Vista actually. Bought without OS.

Tjeez... Indeed, it's designed for Vista...

Did you try to install the drivers in safemode?