Fedora6 - Windows XP networking problem
 

Hi,

I installed Fedora 6 on my PC with an existing Windows XP on my hard disk.Everything went well and Fedora was up and running.. When I restarted my m/c on Windows XP, the MAC id is FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF (hence I got 'no or limited connectivity' ). I power cycled my PC and rebooted into windows and everything started working fine. No matter how many times I reboot into windows, the n/w is working fine... Only when I switch between the two OS's, I face this problem. I didnt see this problem when I had Fedora 5 coexisting with Windows XP. Though the problem appears in Windows XP, I thought it might be a good idea to know why this happens only in the combo of Fedora 6 and Windows XP. And if you can tell me some remedy to overcome this issue...

Thanks,
Myth

I am going to grasp at straws here...

What kind of NIC (Brand/Model) do you have? Is it onboard or a separate PCI card? What motherboard do you have if it is onboard?

Hi,
The motherboard is described as follows
* Motherboard manufacturer's name: ECS RC410-M
* HP/Compaq name: Asterope2-GL8E
It contains an onboard Realtek RTL8100 10/100 Mbps Fast Ethernet controller
Thanks,
Mythili

I'm just bumping this thread because never seen this problem before.

An Idea:

Forget where to do this in XP but!!!

You could take the MAC address off of your card and hard code. (Manually type in) What the address is.

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In XP you can use the regedit to edit the registry from a GUI or the reg command to edit it from the console, I’ll be using regedit. Information on all your NICs can be found the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002bE10318}\ . Under this key you will find a bunch of sub keys labeled as 0000, 00001, 0002 and so forth. We can assume any MAC address we want by finding the key that controls the NIC we want to change, putting in a string value called “NetworkAddress” and setting it to the MAC address we want to use formatted as a twelve digit hex number (example: 000000000001). To find out which key is which we can search through them for the value “DriverDesc” until we find the one that matches the NIC we wish to alter. After you set “NetworkAddress” to the address you want just restart the NIC by disabling it then enabling it (or in the case of PCMCIA cards, just eject and reinsert). You can confirm the MAC address change by using the “getmac” or “ipconfig /all” commands.


http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=security/changemac

Source which could be wrong so do a little more research.

Before trying anything...
Are you looking at the broadcast MAC address?

While you could force the mac address, I think that the issue may be some sort of setting or driver/firmware issue with the mobo or NIC. I am wondering if updating the BIOS will fix this. Is there some sort of issue with their APIC implementation that is causing issues with FC6? I do not know. The first thing that I would do is check for a BIOS update from HP/Compaq for your model. The check for driverupdates all the way around.

Good luck!

The might BIOS update could solve the problem but remember to backup your current BIOS or there could be problems. Big Problems!

I tried just to set the MAC addr using Method 1 from this link
http://www.nthelp.com/NT6/change_mac_w2k.htm
It worked... So, didnt do any changes to the registry/BIOS...
Anyway, thanks a ton for your help