Help please!

Recently installed Belkin Gigabit Ethernet Express Card & drivers in laptop.

All is working fine with one exception - everytime I boot into Windows (XP Pro) the card isn't automatically detected. If I disconnect the card then connect it once booted, XP recognises it & all works fine.

Any ideas as to how I can get XP to automatically recognise the card on boot up without having to manually pull it out & then push it back in again?

Rang Belkin & got the usual Asian lady who obviously didn't even know what an express card was let alone able to provide me with any technical know how - she said, take it back to the store! After disappearing for 10 mins she did come back & agree the card should auto detect on boot up, but that was it! I'll let you guess what my response was! Wished I'd bought the Linksys one, now there technical support is second to none!

Thanks

The problem will always be with you. You will always wonder whether a connection issue is caused by your computer or the ethernet card. That will drive you crazy on the road.
Ethernet cards are almost perfect nowadays. You have to really abuse them to make them fail. Connection is simply automatic for 97 percent of users.
Clean your connectors, check your internal socket, and perhaps clean it with some post or contact cleaner and a que tip.
I suspect the Belkin, and would insist upon an exchange.
We service hundreds upon hundreds of laptops and their ethernet cards. We have not seen any fail.
But you can see changes in Belkin from time to time. Belkin is not a manufacturer. They have no design engineers. They are a marketing company, though a very good one. You will see differnet Belkin cards, depending on which country you are in, and which side of the country.
Give Belkin a chance to get thngs right... when they say, "Take it back to the store," do so. Trade it for a LinkSys, Cisco, DLink, Netgear, IBM, Adaptec, or SIIG. Tell the store Belkin told you to do so.

Thanks for your reply Ray.

The problem isn't with the connectors - everyime the card is unpugged & plugged in XP detects it. As already described, the issue is that the card isn't being picked up automatically at XP boot up. it does get picked up everytime when it's expelled from the slot & pushed back in again.

I have to totally disagree with you re Belkin's so called technical Help Line - trust me, it was a joke. The lady I spoke to clearly didn't underatand NICs & couldn't even grasp what Ethernet was. She didn't even start any process in the discusion as to things to try to resolve the problem - she gave up on it from the start. Unfortunately, saying "take back to store" isn't helpful as it was purchased on-line as are most PC peripherals in the UK. Belkin didn't tell me to exchange it for another brand I just told them my experience with Linksys technical help was very different to what I was being offered by Belkin.

I don't believe the product is faulty, it's most likely something to do with it's configuration or the laptop's configuration or boot up configuration.

I think you will need to try another card to know.
We never see what you describe, and we do a lot of laptops.
The only other choice is to reformat and reinstall windows to see what happens.

Which laptop is it? Maybe you need a BIOS update? Also, make sure you have the latest chipset/motherbard drivers from your laptop maker.

And of course, you istalled the latest drivers downloaded from Belkin for your NIC?

Belkin confirmed I had the latest drivers for the card. Latest chipset drivers installed. Latest BIOS revision installed.

Anyone know what command on XP boot initialises the Express card port? - I really do feel the problem lies somewhere here.

There is no command. ExpressCard is a direct extension of the PCI Express bus and USB. So, depending on the card, the second the USB or PCI Express controller is initialised, the card should be scanned for and detected.

So your problem is:
The motherboard (BIOS) is not powering up the ExpressCard device or slot at bootup.
The USB or chipset driver is not powering up the ExpressCard device when initialised.
The ExpressCard driver is unable to initialise the device without a hotplug event.

It would be interesting to know whether your EC card uses USB or PCI-E. Have it detected and see in Device Manager where it is connected to.


You could try some other ExpressCard device to see if the problem is with your Belkin card or the system itself.

Or, you could try booting a Linux LiveCD and see if it manages to detect your Belkin. It doesn't have to be supported - you should still see the unknown device in the PCI listing. This would show if the problem is with Windows or the hardware.

Thanks Nodsu, your input has helped my understanding of where the problem lies.

The card uses PCI-E. Unfortuantely, I haven't got access to another Express Card device. This problem/issue isn't critical but more of a niggle - it's quite easy to expell & re-connect the card to get XP to recognise it.

Thanks again for your input, much appreciated.

You could try the "Scan for new hardware" function in Device Manager. If that brings up your NIC without replugging, then this can be emulated using special programs.

Then just put that rescan program in your startup..

I have the same problem...

I am experiencing exactly the same problem except with a different Express Card (HaSoTec analogue video capture card). I am using a new Dell M6300 laptop, running XP Pro, SP2 and I've downloaded the latest BIOS updates. When my laptop boots, the BIOS runs as normal but then stalls in the windows XP splash screen.

I think this problem is therefore with the windows OS boot procedure as this problem has occurred with a different card (as discussed above), it occurs after the BIOS is run, and the card works fine if ejected during boot and inserted once the OS has booted.

I've read all the previous posts but so far havent found a satisfactory solution.

Any more suggestions?

Tom

Hi Tom

Unfortunately still haven't resolved the issue. The laptop's XP boot up is normal with the exception of not initialising the card.

Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 6400.

If I come accross a solution that works I'll re-post & would also kindly ask for you to do the same. Meanwhile, I'll simply continue to pop out/pop in the card on each boot - not a big issue just an unresolved niggle!

ps. have re-installed XP (not to resolve this issue but to resolve another more serious problem) & the card still doesn't automatically initialise on boot up. I agree with you, the issue appears to lie with XP not automatically initialising the PCI express port within the boot up process.