I've been a linux user for about 3-4 years now, and have never seen something so bizarre as the issue I'm having now. Firstly, I have an AMD Sempron 3000+ processor 1.8GHz with onboard SiS VGA, sound, and network. The ethernet driver in use is sis190. I bought the board on newegg, here's the link in case i forgot something:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813135060 Some of the specs seem slightly different though. The ethernet isn't Realtek, it's SiS, but I'm no network guy so I might not know what I'm talking about.)
Also, as a preface, I'm a senior at Devry University NJ for Electronics Engineering Technology and I live in "on-campus" housing (not on campus, actual apartment building 5miles away). Part of the deal with housing is that since our utilities are included in rent, the head of housing pays for our digital cable and "high-speed" internet (I use quotes because it's Comcast). The network has never really been too reliable, as the connection randomly goes down at times, but it's better than dial-up.
So here's the issue: I recently upgraded from Ubuntu Hardy Heron to Intrepid Ibex. I'd been happy with Ubuntu since Hoary Hedgehog up to this point, but almost immediately I started having issues with graphics, ethernet, and others. So, I decided to dual-boot with Win2K (I had an old disc laying around. Better than spending hundreds of dollars on Vista that wouldn't work on this low-end PC). Since I finally had Windows, I could finally install those discs that came with my motherboard (VGA drivers, SoundMAX drivers, ethernet drivers, and some additional software like Adobe Reader). After making things work wonderfully and to my specifications in Win2K I decided to take the time to edit GRUB from the LiveCD and get Linux working again.
Long story short, I made Windows unbootable by accident and didn't fix my issues in Linux so I decided maybe it was Intrepid Ibex that was at fault. It was time to try a new Linux anyway, so I got a Fedora 9 DVD and installed away. This time I installed Win2k first and partitioned 35GB for it (I'm a bit of a gamer
), then installed Fedora. Of course, my issue was not fixed.
I noticed through my random raving and typing every webpage I knew into Firefox, that not all internet was lost to me. The router was in fact, giving me a valid IP address and I could still access Google, DeVry's eCollege page, and the Proquest and EBSCOhost databases (which we use for research in class), lightning fast. This made me wonder if maybe the school was doing something, but it's the same MAC address and the same network, so that doesn't make sense. Also, I can only search Google, I can't view the pages it finds, and I can't view the actual DeVry sites where I register for classes and the like. Why would DeVry block me from some sites but not others? I don't think it's possible, but again, I'm no network guy.
As a last ditch effort, I checked Windows and every page on the internet is available to me. I'm even able to get Microsoft Updates. I decided to try Linux Mint (Elyssa), since I can at least play with it like I always did with Ubuntu (since I've only used Debian and Ubuntu to date). Sure enough, same issue. I chose to post before I break my system again and have to reinstall Windows again, now that it's updated and usable. Most recently, I've tried switching to a static IP address, but that makes no difference. Is there a better network manager than Gnome's default? I've only ever had issues with the KDE network manager before this, and that was only with the school's wireless network (which I solved by using WICD instead).
Please help me with this. It doesn't even fully make sense why some pages work and only on the Linux OS, regardless of distro, partition, or flavor. Any suggestions?
