Foo - Damn college ethernet connection

So I have an Acer Aspire, running Vista. Anyways, when I plug the ethernet cable into my laptop from the wall, I don't receive any connection. I have to restart my computer, and THEN the internet will work. What really bugs me is that if I close the laptop lid, and it standbys...if I reopen the lid then the internet won't work AGAIN.

When the internet does work, the computer says LAN enabled, but for some reason my computer loves the WLAN before all, but not sure if that makes any difference.

This has also been happening to two other guys across the hall from me, who also run Vista. What is the problem? I thought that plugging the cable in is basically a plug & play deal. Grr.

First, you can choose what closing the lid does. Go to control panel >power options> choose what closing the lid does. It's not plug and play because these networks all have provisions of use. For example, in order to use the wireless and wired network here, I must register my machine and download trend micro. Even then, the connection is fairly slow compared to my cable internet at home.

AFter you plug in run cmd.exe -> ipconfig /renew and see if that works.

In addition to donheff's suggestion, also check the properties of your local area connection. Most network cards, particularly in laptops have a power-save feature. Turn it off.

And always remember that Acer Computers are shipped "Prebroken".

Wow, thats ridiculous and really freakin annoying.

Does that happen with all comps running Vista?

Oh yeah, maybe try disabling the connection (Right click in network connections) , and then enabling it.

When the internet does work, the computer says LAN enabled, but for some reason my computer loves the WLAN before all, but not sure if that makes any difference.



Plug in the RJ45 connector and disable the wireless connection. Hopefully, you have an external switch.

When the internet does work, the computer says LAN enabled, but for some reason my computer loves the WLAN before all, but not sure if that makes any difference.


Thats actually pretty common. Personally, I recommend to all my users to disable the wireless radio whenever they are connecting via lan anyways. Pc's are pretty stupid, and a lot of them do default to wlan, once it gets an ip for both you can sometimes have some latency in how the OS thinks making the pc seem slow.

Turn off the wlan when you don't use it. :)

That's not the college network. It's your laptop. Somewhere in the network settings there should be an option to connect to the wireless "On Demand" instead of constantly.

If that doesn't do it, I'd try uninstalling and re-installing your ethernet drivers. If you don't have a driver disc, you might need to download them, so do that before you uninstall. Alternately, the Windows default driver should also work fine.

Actually, I prefer the Windows driver. I've had more problems with 3rd party wireless drivers than perhaps any other type of software ever.

Actually, I prefer the Windows driver. I've had more problems with 3rd party wireless drivers than perhaps any other type of software ever.

Everytime. all 3rd party software blow chunks and is more complicated then it needs to be

the only time "some" 3rd party software is decent is when you can do fairly comprehensive rssi scans.

Yeah, Windows doesn't do multi-homing very well. What you can do is bring up a command-prompt (DOS) window and type in:

>IPCONFIG /RELEASE ALL
>IPCONFIG /RENEW ALL

Will get a new DHCP IP without having to restart the computer.

Also the network-stack sucks and won't utilize full-bandwidth. You'll notice this especially if you move multi-gig files around often enough. Add the following registry entries to improve TCP/IP network speed:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters
Tcp1323Opts REG_DWORD value = 3
TcpWindowSize REG_DWORD value=131400

So I have an Acer

well there's your problem right there