So, there's some kind of major problem here with networking stopping for people after a while:http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itpronetworking/thread/60ec6b74-6cc3-4e02-bb2c-d0d26149d64fhttp://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itpronetworking/thread/5098a34c-1f38-4dbc-a723-eda56578eea8http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itpronetworking/thread/a8d0f823-e9ae-4b7b-b6c8-e4929c3ba6e8http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itpronetworking/thread/f8c9fed2-fd86-4064-b1b6-77e97baed7fbhttp://www.sevenforums.com/network-internet/9075-ethernet-connection-drop.htmlMost of the discussions seem to involve NVidia drivers; I don't have those. I have a http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/prodinfoCategory?lc=en&dlc=cs&cc=cz&lang=cs&product=3856272The first time I installed Windows 7 RC, on a different computer, I didn't have this problem.With this computer, after a reboot, most of the time (more than 9 times out of 10) the network stops working within 10 minutes.What "stops working" means: hovering over the network icon on the taskbar says "limited connectivity", and the network status page says "IPv4 Connectivity: no network access". I cannot disable any network driver at this time, or do much else in the device manager; it hangs. Powering off the computer takes > 5 minutes (most of the time I just hard power off, though, when this happens).The only response I've seen from Microsoft in any of the threads on this is pasted here:- ------Does it still repro for you? If so could you help us gather the logs so that we can invesitgate the issue further? Here is the tracing instruction (from an elevated command prompt):- netsh trace start nid_wpp capture=yes- repro- netsh trace stopThe last command will print out the location of the cab file and you can send it to tinqian@microsoft.com. Thank you very much for selfhosting windows 7!Tin Qian [Microsoft]- ------I'm going to go ahead and do that soon, but I wanted to get the thread up, partly in case anyone has any ideas, and partly to show just how bad the issue is.This happened with the built-in wireless, which I've now unplugged from the motherboard. It is still hapenning with a USB wireless device that had no problems on the last machine. Here's the specs:Interface name: Wireless Network Connection 3 Driver : 802.11n USB Wireless LAN Card Vendor : Ralink Technology, Corp. Provider : Ralink Date : 1/8/2009 Version : 2.3.0.0 INF file : C:\Windows\INF\oem10.inf Files : 3 total C:\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\netr28ux.sys C:\Windows\system32\RaCoInstx.dll C:\Windows\system32\RaCoInst.dat Type : Native Wi-Fi Driver Radio types supported : 802.11b 802.11g FIPS 140-2 mode supported : Yes Hosted network supported : No Authentication and cipher supported in infrastructure mode: Open None Open WEP-40bit Open WEP-104bit Open WEP Shared WEP-40bit Shared WEP-104bit Shared WEP WPA-Enterprise TKIP WPA-Enterprise CCMP WPA-Personal TKIP WPA-Personal CCMP WPA2-Enterprise TKIP WPA2-Enterprise CCMP WPA2-Personal TKIP WPA2-Personal CCMP Vendor defined TKIP Vendor defined CCMP WPA2-Enterprise Vendor defined WPA2-Enterprise Vendor defined Vendor defined Vendor defined Vendor defined Vendor defined Vendor defined Vendor defined Authentication and cipher supported in ad-hoc mode: Open None Open WEP-40bit Open WEP-104bit Open WEP WPA2-Personal CCMP Vendor defined Vendor defined IHV service present : Yes IHV adapter OUI : [00 40 96], type: [00] IHV extensibility DLL path: C:\Windows\system32\RAIHV.dll IHV UI extensibility ClSID: {73407edc-77f8-4183-9f20-d35867e6fef2} IHV diagnostics CLSID : {00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}Note that the onboard card is a RaLink too.I have no proxies.I've tried disabling IPv6.Neither network card has power options, but I've tried disabling everything I could find in both cards.The DHCP change in regedit is irrelevant; this isn't a problem obtaining DHCP. Besides, I've tried setting a static IP too; no help.-Robin

Hey, I got a trace of it!I've already sent mail to Tin Qian, but in case other people might find it useful, it's at http://teddyb.org/~rlpowell/public_media/NetTrace.cab-Robin

I got another one:http://teddyb.org/~rlpowell/public_media/NetTrace-2.cabAfter I got that trace, I noticed that trying to upload large files to my server seems to tickle it, so I paid some attention to the size counters in the network status window. I'll try to be more certain next time, but the fail was around 76 million bytes sent, and 3 million bytes received.-Robin

Any Microsoft people out there at all?!? My network is failing more than ten times every day, requiring use of the power button to fix most times, and I work from home! This is really, really bad. Is anyone looking at this?If it was just me, that would be one thing, but it's really really not; see the list of threads in the original post.-Robin

Two more threads on this issue:http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itpronetworking/thread/446e8666-6619-4647-85d4-ebef6640b714http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itpronetworking/thread/cff8b61e-11ec-47f9-bc4b-72664531beb5And no, the "solution" of uninstalling all my NIC drivers doesn't work for me.This is crazy. I'd love to help debug it, but someone at MicroSoft needs to be paying attention.-Robin

Strange I have WIn7 Loading on a number of sub-par machinesGX270, GX240, GX280 with no issues I would almost bet the issue is the card is failing to negoashate the correct speed and duplex so it is dropping connections have you tried taking it off of auto and putting it on 100/full 100/half or what ever matches your switch/hub in the past I have seen simular issues related to speed and duplex

Like many others, I've had problems with connectivity under windows 7 RC --- but got lucky and found a fix, which I'm posting because it might help some of you, especially those with Linksys routers and adapters. I installed Windows 7 RC 7100 on June 26, and it worked fine with no problems connecting until about July 16, when connection speed slowed almost to dial-up levels, and then declined further to no Internet connection at all, although I could sometimes connect to the router. I dual boot to Win 7 or Vista on a Dell Dimension desktop with nVidia video card, Linksys WMP300N PCI wireless adapter and WRT 160N router. I upgraded the router firmware to 3.02 and reduced the beacon interval from 100 to 50 msec. (I had previously found I had to set it to transmit at 20 or 40 MHz, rather than the 20MHz default.) I also restored Win 7 to remove the most recent (July 19) Windows update. The move that fixed Win 7 connectivity immediately was rolling back to the native Linksys adapter driver from the Broadcom driver that Windows supplied. I think, but am not certain, that Id tried this before without success, so whether some of the other changes were necessary as well I dont know. Whatever the reason, now I have a solid fast cable broadband connection with Win 7. I hope this helps some folks with this maddening connectivity problem.

I initially had a problem with this - Which seemed to arise because of the difference in speed between the DHCP device (10/100Mbps)and the network card (Gbit) on the adapter concerned - both connected by a cheap 1Gbps switch.In my case changing the speed from autonegotite to 100 duplex sorted the problem.I realise that this may be a wider problem but it may be worth seeing if you can get an updated driver from the manufacturer in the near future (they are currently unable to release them or so I understand).

Seems like there are many frustrated folk out there. I've detailed the issue, asked politely for help, became annoyed and now close to giving up with Win7. MS does not acknowledge there is a problem and (I'll put money on it) will have not made changes to the retail release. NIC manufacturers (Linksys in my case) have not acknowledged or replied to the issue either, so we must assume they are not making the effort to develop new drivers. What is it with companies who urge users to evaluate and feed-back information, and then ignore the tricky issues? All that happens is the affected users will not part with their hard-earned bucks for an OS that can't keep connected to the network. On the brighter side, disabling IPv6 DID improve the dropping from an aveage of 1h to over 3h. If anybody at MS is listening - does this point you in some sort of direction? I believe with 95% certaintly that the majority of all network dropping comlaints are driver related. Pity the developers aren't prepared to give us the confidence that new drivers will be made available shortly.

I am *very* happy to say that MS devs are working closely with me on this issue via email. They can't reproduce it, so they've been walking me through various kinds of traces (up to and including a full RAM dump 0.o; good thing I run my own web server to put it on!). We don't have a solution yet, I'm afraid. In my case, however, I have a workaround, but my NIC is USB-based. If the NIC is completely disconnected during POST/boot, and plug it in only after the machine is all the way booted, the problem seems to go away. I've only had it happen once under those conditions, and that was after several hours. Anyways, it turns out that this probably isn't one unified issue; different cards are having different problems that all end up looking similar. Also, in some cases Windows 7 is actually tickling bugs in wireless access points. 0.o Anyways, they *are* working on it, for what it's worth. -Robin

Thanks for the vote of confidence Robin - it's very pleasing to know MS are onto the problem. I worked analytically through the problem last night, and noted the failure yesterday only occurred after 5 hours. It seems to me that high rates of access exacerbate the problem. I can pretty well guarantee failure with large downloads or streaming media. Last night it was watching historical articles on Apollo. Here's how a failure appears to me: 1. Data stops flowing 3. A couple of minutes later the yellow triangle shows up on the network icon stating no internet connectivity. This means no network activity for me as I connect through wireless. 4. Use the dianose the problem tool and find it cannot re-set the NIC. 5. Manually disable the NIC through device manager. 6. Try to re-enable - device manager hangs. 7. Force closure either by repeadly trying to close window or use task manager. 8. Check event log: the interesting item is: The Network Diagnostics Framework has completed the diagnosis phase of operation. The following repair option was offered: Helper Class Name: AddressAcquisition Root Cause: Your computer has a local IP address You might not be able to access the Internet or some network resources. Root Cause Guid: {245a9d66-ae9c-4518-a5b4-655752b0a5bd} Repair option: Reset the "Wireless Network Connection" adapter This can sometimes resolve an intermittent problem. RepairGuid: {07d37f7b-fa5e-4443-bda7-ab107b29afb9} Seconds required for repair: 70 Security context required for repair: 80 Interface: Wireless Network Connection ({1621f305-2282-41f4-817e-3fba143fec8a}) 9. Attempt normal re-start. Hangs on the 'Shutting Down' screen. 10. Reset, restart and network back up and running. Conclusions to my problem, to date: a) NIC (Linksys WMP300N v1) hangs and cannot be software re-set. b) Driver compatibility with Win7 the likely root cause. Same driver release is 100% stable on Vista (I dual-boot) c) Turning off IPv6 has lengthened the time between failures. I would welcome working with MS to isolate the issue in more detail. Chris

Chris,I have the same NIC andthought I had solved my problem (very slow or no connectivity)by rolling back the driver-- see my post above -- but then I had a failure similar if not identical to yours; I had been using Skype for about 10 min.Other than that, the connection has been fast and solid for about a week. I didn't do anything about IPv6.Jonathan

Hey guys, Was searching through the web for fixes and found this page. I'm having the same problem, but after reading a few places it seemed to be a DHCP issue. So I disabled the IPv6 protocol and disabled DHCP on the IPv4 and set an IP address. This solved the issue straight away. I found setting the correct speed in the driver settings didn't help. I'm using a 100MBs Netgear router with a 1GBs on board LAN connection.

Have any of you tried enabling flow control?System - Gigabyte 780G Motherboard, 1x250Gb, 2x750Gb, 1x1TB HDDs, AMD Phenom 8450 CPU, ATI HD3200 integrated graphics, 1 Haup 2200 tuner, 2 HDHomerun network tuners, Lite-On BD Player, DVD-RW, Silverstone LC-17 Case, 4Gb RAM, Sony Bravia RPTV