Weird Lan Problem

I hope this is the right place to post this. I have an Acer Aspire One - 150 Model ZG5 with Windows XP Home Ed. sp3 and everything seems to work quite well with exception to the wired lan ( RTL 8102E )

Whenever I copy across my lan using the wired lan it starts out fast then drops off sometimes taking as long as 20 minutes to copy a 500MB file. It doesn't matter if I'm copying to or from it there's a huge performance problem. Now here's where it gets even more weird.

If I boot in safe mode with network enabled the problem clears up OR if I boot normal mode and while transferring through the lan launch a program that utilizes the hard drive - ie scan the hard drive with my AV or play a movie etc. It's very noticeable too since I can see the copy time remaining literally jump down from 30 minutes to 3-4 minutes as soon as the hard drive starts working harder. I thought maybe it was a defective unit so I returned it but the replacement is doing EXACTLY the same thing. I also tried installing an older driver for the RTL 8102E but that didn't help either. Notably the Wireless does not have the same issue and transfer speed is what you would expect.

I did also notice that the recent bios updates have been mentioning issues with the lan. I have the latest bios and still have the problem.

Anyone else noticing this?

Joe

 

Joe, I did experience this issue myself... I just removed the lan cable from my One and used my WIFI instead... took about 1/10th the time to do the copying(warcraft3)
Um.. now that I think about it, I may suggest disabling the Windows Firewall and then testing your transfer speeds over wired-lan. I noticed with my own that while the firewall was allowing me to do some things over the network, it wold at times just cut me off outright... that got annoying. I never use the firewall on my own machines... but since the One was going to my sister and she uses it 'who knows where' and with an unknown level of XP competency... i find myself leaving it enabled. >_<
Just my two cents and voiceing that you're not alone in that issue. Oh, and when I noticed the slow problem I did not have the latest bios installed... but I did install the latest bios update but since then had not checked the network performance.

 

I'm also getting private messages from people having the exact same prob. When is Acer going to do something about this?????? The last user claims if he starts media player the lan speed improves. What gives Acer? Trying to be patient but surely they must know about this problem by now!

Joe
:?: :?: :?: :?:

 

My Realtek 8102E Lan Card doesnt work at all. its listed in the device manager, but it doesnt recognize Ethernet cables you plug in. update didnt change anything. I did a request at acer support.

martin

 

I have had exactly the same problem as well. I am glad that I found this link on here because I have just reinstalled windows XP again with no luck. I also notice that with a wired connection it is very slow on the Internet.

I cannot install anything across the network because it is too slow and I cannot copy software files over because it is too slow and times out halfway through.

I have contacted Acer on a separate issue and they were absolutely useless, but has anyone contacted Acer or had any success with this problem.

Just so you guys are aware, I have tried the following:

Disabled Windows Firewall
Removed McAffee
Reinstalled Service Pack 3
Tried manually assigning an IP address as opposed to DHCP
Manually tried assigning speed and duplex and removing it off auto negotiation
Resinstalled the hidden partition ie Windows XP as came preloaded on the machine
I have tested copying files with different machines on my network and they all work ok, so network is ok, just the Aspire is slow.

All the above with no luck....any thoughts, suggestions????

 

yes, i have the exact same problem, i have exchanged 2 aspire one already and they all have faulty LAN. Looks like there's a bad batch out there. What is Acer going to do about this?

 

I too have this problem but I came to the conclusion that it is NOT hardware related.
I dual-boot linpus and windows xp and only xp seems to suffer from this problem.
So it is probably a faulty driver. I'll try some other drivers soon.

Btw, it really is a weird issue... The file transfer just stops at some point.... then if the Aspire One does ANYTHING it starts up again. I tried it, starting a HD-intensive task. immediatly starts up again. Even a single ping packet can shake the card from it's sleep. (This might also be made into a work around.)

 

After a night I don't seem to really have this problem anymore. Although if I look closely I can see that my connection ain't too stable. It drops out regularly.

I'll try to recreate the problem some more and install an updated driver directly from Realtek.


EDIT: I just found out it was actually my router that was causing the instability. But if anyone still has this problem I suggest you try this driver. It's slightly newer than the one provided by Acer.
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads...d=7&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

 

I'm glad I found this thread regarding the LAN problem. I too have been experiencing the same issue. For description here viewtopic.php?f=34&t=3437
I've even tried taking the router out of the equation by using cross over cable PC to PC. Same issue. So it's not likely to be a router problem.

 

I have found that this problem no longer exist ever since I've upgraded the bios to v3304.

 

My AOA150 have the exact same issues of the LAN/WIFI before, but now all the problems have been solved, finally.
Here are the drivers version and configs installed:

- BIOS 3.304
- Realtek RTL8102 5.702.806.2008 (you may grab it from realtek offical site)
- Atheros WLAN Driver 7.6.1.140 WHQL (It is not offical released, yet, I found it from a Taiwan site)
- Install TCPOptimizer, fine tune the optimal setting of both network adaptors.

Hope this help.

 

As an OS X user I can testify that the Ethernet speed issues existed in my OS too, and that it was the BIOS update that fixed the probem.

My system control panel stil reports weird stuff though; half duplex and no indication of link speed.

Ifconfig says something different: Private data x-ed out.

Code:

[...]$ ifconfig en0
en0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
	inet6 xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:f036%en0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x4 
	inet 10.0.1.5 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 10.0.1.255
	ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xxx:xx 
	media: autoselect (<unknown type>) status: active
	supported media: autoselect 10baseT/UTP <half-duplex> 10baseT/UTP <full-duplex> 100baseTX <half-duplex> 100baseTX <full-duplex> 1000baseT <half-duplex> 1000baseT <full-duplex>

1000mbit potential; yeah right!

Edit: It is probaby that the hardware engineers are focusing stabiiity now, and that they will wok on display matters later. Hoever, I'm still on Half Duplex, which sucks.

 

I too have this problem, and Ive made a separate post on this forum about it.
I have, however traced the problem to be something to do with a power-saving feature. Have you tried to grab hold of a window on the screen, typically the 'copying' window and moving it around in circles? Strangely, that kept the file copy going with no trouble at all.
Installing the newest driver from Acer's website fixed the problem for one (1) file copy, didn't matter how many files were selected or how big, but the first copy went fine, then the problem re-occurs.

I am currently on holiday, but will try the bios update first thing when I get back home.

 

I can confirm that the issue is resolved by updating the bios of the AAO150 to version 3304 and above. I am currently using v.3309 without a hitch.

 

I was still having this issue with the latest bios in Windows XP, over both Wifi and Ethernet. I think I may have finally found the cause. I went into my ethernet network card properties > power management and unchecked "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power." So far, it looks like this resolved the issue. After unchecking that my file transfers over FTP on the local network never go below 2.0MB/s, and generally are in the 9~11MB/s range.

For those unfamiliar with xp networking, Right click My Network Places > Properties. Right click Local Area connection > Properties. Click Configure. Click Power Management tab. Uncheck "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power."