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If the new drivers were so "different CPU's , different BIOS and motherboards would work" then it is criminal not to mention that to customers on their WEB site or other means . " I will pass your email to all the tech support personal and managers so that we can support our customers better " I guess the fact that Lorna's and Peters machines were AMD chips or something similar made the NICS disfunctional.

-----Original Message-----
From: mpark@dlink.ca <mailto:mpark@dlink.ca>
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2001 4:06 PM
To: Bob Crosby
Subject: RE: D-Link Products DHN-520 & DHN-120

Hello !

Thank you for writing to D-Link Networks Canada.
(Please send the reply email to support@dlink.ca)

They improved DHN520 driver so that Older Motherboards, different BIOS, and
different CPU will work. I will pass your email to all the tech support personal and managers
so that we can support our customers better
in the future. In our defense, problems are different case by case.

Thanks for the constructive criticism.

If you need more help you can email us back or contact technical
support at 1-800-361-5265. Note that we give English and French
technical support. If you are in the US, call 949-788-0805 or
ustech@dlink.com for email support..

If you want to make comments on our technical support, please
go at www.dlink.ca in the support section and then click on
"Technical Service Satisfaction Survey". Upon completing the
form, your name would be entered into a monthly draw for prize.

Have a nice day.

"Bob Crosby" <bcrosby@powersurfr.com> on 05/10/2001 06:16:18 PM

Subject: RE: D-Link Products DHN-520 & DHN-120

Contacted D-Link support by phone in Toronto and we spent hours going
over the same troubleshooting techniques we have been doing. As a "shot" we
decided that since the drivers on the D-link CDROMS did not work and all
indicators were pointing that direction ( exhausted everything else ), we
asked Toronto if there were later drivers on the D-Link FTP server. He
responded in the affirmative so we downloaded the latest drivers for both
cards . Voila - everything worked when we updated to these drivers !!

Should it not be advertised that the drivers on the D-link cdroms do not
work on WIN98 SE machines and a user HAS to get the drivers from your FTP
site. It would save a lot of frustration and "bad press" . What change in
the second release of drivers that made it work ? Why didn't the original
drivers work ?
-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Crosby <mailto:bcrosby@powersurfr.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2001 1:13 AM
To: mpark@dlink.ca
Cc: Lorna McDonald; Peter Jones
Subject: D-Link Products DHN-520 & DHN-120

Would like some advice and guidance on why no D-Link cards that we
have purchased have worked . First of all , we are not novices in this
business . I have been working with with Networks for 15 years for a living
and have extensive network expertise.

Details : We bought 2 DHN-520 cards and attempted to establish a
network on two machines running WIN98 SE . We had it working but there was a
conflict in our AMD machine ( it would not shut down ) . We played musical
chairs with all the PCI devices on the AMD machine to get rid of the
conflict and even re-installed WIN98 . This time we could not get it to work
no matter what we did . So we gave up and bought 2 DHN-120 cards thinking
that the PCI card was the culprit ( the machine had 15 of the 16 interrupts
in use ). The Network STILL did not work . The power light , and the link
light on the DHN-120 were on but the activity light just flickered . We
could not ping either card nor get Netbui Network Neighbourhood. The AMD had
another network card attached to the Internet so we disabled that and even
removed it and the D-link USB card still did not work . No conflicts
reported by WIN98 and the machine shut down and started up properly .

This has been weeks & weeks of troubleshooting so we went to a
different house with 2 different computers ( one is an AMD with another
network card ) . We put the PCI card ( DHN520 ) in one machine and ran the
diagnostic utility and everything checked out and no conflicts reported by
WIN98 . The AMD got the USB card ( DHN-120 ) and exactly the same scenerio
!! The link light and power light is on but we can not ping the other
machine nor get network neighbourhood . What is going on ! What are we
missing ?? . At both systems ( houses ) we have PnP and late model machines
with updated BIOS's . So we have 4 D-link cards (PCI & USB ), 4 computers
and we can not get 2 simple phoneline networks to work. Colour us frustrated
!!

LAST EDITED ON May-16-01 AT 03:32 PM (GMT)

With exception of the problem described in the third paragraph at http://duxcw.com/digest/Reviews/Network/dlink/dhn910/dhn910-3.htm, I had no problem making the DHN520’s work in computers with AMD processors. My machine was loaded and my wife’s computer was an old clunker with and old BIOS and chipset. Troublshooting PCI interrupt conflicts is, unfortunately more a frustrating art than a science. I would guess that your problem was caused by the fact that the motherboards in the computers have the VIA chipset and did not have the VIA 4-in-1 drivers (http://www.viatech.com/drivers/index_new2.htm ) installed. In particular, many network adapters will have problems if the IRQ Routing INF is not installed. Larry

At one house , the new drivers made everything work . At the other house when we updated to the drivers , the network only worked from ONE direction ! The non AMD VIA Apollo MVP 3 machine upstairs ( old clunker ) works ( network neighborhood , TCP/IP , printing etc. TCP/IP worked both directions ( go figure ) but network neighborhood would "flash light" for ever . ICS was installed on that machine and DHCP would not broadcast to the machine upstairs. The weird thing is I manually configured the IP address upstairs to 192,168.0.2 put in a default gateway of 192.168.0.1 and enabled DNS with the server being 192.168.0.1 and that machine could reach the Internet !!

On the AMD we took out every card and tested and it still did not work . It did not matter which phoneline card ( PCI or USB ) we used - same symptoms. WE are now blaming the Motherboard . We will replace it with an Intel product and it will probably work UNLESS someone can come up with a brilliant solution . The 4 in one drivers were installed on the this VIA motherboard ...

Try both computers downstairs. Larry

We had the network working well for a week with 2 DHN-520 cards but there was a conflict somewhere as other problems surfaced . Re-positioning the various ISA & PCI cards and changing IRQ's got us to this "one way" network . We thought by changing the network card to USB ( DHN-120 ) our problems would be over - but the exact "one way" symptoms persisted. This made us believe that all the experimenting corrupted something in WIN98 . We replaced WIN98 , ran all the Microsoft configuration fixing tools but same symptoms after we completed the installation. I think the registry is the culprit , but my search thru key word registry at Microsoft has not borne fruit . TCP/IP in the registry does not seem to be the problem ( ping works both ways ) but the Microsft network is not functioning .

What part of the registry would be corrupt giving these symptoms ? Pinging works both ways but network neighborhood does not work nor DHCP broadcasting with ICS . The command Net view works to see the other computer but that is "hit and miss" and sometimes takes forever to complete... Net diag does not work as advertised .

The maddening thing is that every Network function works perfectly from the other computer !! On the trouble computer , we took out every other device ( sound card , other NIC , Video to standard VGA one by one but same symptoms so a Microsoft "hidden conflict" does not appear likely . Yet we had it working with a different IRQ allocation ( the DHN520 shared a IRQ with the Video card when it worked ) . Maybe the Video card is giving the phoneline card drivers some grief ??

LAST EDITED ON May-20-01 AT 02:15 PM (GMT)

If the motherboard in the computer that has the USB network adapter installed has a VIA chipset, the VIA USB filter driver (http://www.viatech.com/drivers/index_new2.htm) should be installed. The USB filter driver is not part of the VIA 4-in-1 driver set. I would get the network going with the netBEUI protocol before installing TCP/IP. Although possible, I doubt that a corrupt registry is causing the problem. In my experience, that is a very rare event as far as networking goes. There could be a problem with the TCP/IP stack (see the bottom of http://duxcw.com/faq/network/winsock.htm). I would not recommend sharing a monitor adapter’s IRQ with a network adapter. That is usually problematic. I would not fix a PCI network adapter problem by replacing the adapter with a USB adapter. All one has to do is search Microsoft’s Knowledge Base with any Windows version and USB to see the reason for that statement. USB also requires an interrupt and on many motherboards that interrupt is usually shared with one or two PCI slots. Again, if none of this works, I would suggest moving the upstairs computer downstairs or vice versa and connecting both computers directly together, you still have to have a connection to the telephone wall jack with a direct connection. Larry

Found a Microsoft bulletin that describes our first set of problems :

:http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q193/9/38.ASP?LN=EN-US&SD=gn&FR=0&qry=PCI&rnk=56&src=DHCS_MSPSS_gn_SRCH&SPR=W98

We were so desparate to solve IRQ problems that we put the D-Link PCI card in slot 1 next to the AGP port. The result was as in the above bulletin - we got the Network Neighborhood problem due to the AGP conflict . Network worked one way only .

What I do not understand is that we get the same Network Neighborhood symptoms with the USB controller and the D-link 120 card. Perhaps the IRQ assigned to the USB controller still conflicts with the AGP ? Possibly the registry is corrupt due to that experience and there is a carry over with the USB card ? Will move the USB controller to IRQ 9 ( only IRQ left ) and see what happens . Will try your direct connect also ..

We are intrigued that the PCI and USB adapter have the identical symptoms with the Network Neighborhood ...

O.K. had another go at the problem . The Network Neighborhood flash light forever was a Browse Master problem . As soon as we made the downstairs computer the browse master and disabled browse master in the upstairs computer , we could see the upstairs computer in NN . We still have a problem though. The downstairs computer can not map a drive to the upstairs one even though vice versa works . Troubleshooting techniques we did :

1. Netbui is default protocol on both machines

2. TCP/IP ( pinging ) and Netbui work on both machines

3. Net view works , Net diag works and find a computer works on the downstairs computer . Everything works on the upstairs computer .

4. ICS works on downstairs computer and upstairs computer can get a DHCP lease and gets to the Internet via the downstairs computer .

5. We removed Netbui and just ran on TCP/IP . Same symptoms. We then re-installed Netbui .

6. We reinstalled all cards and moved some IRQ's and re-installed network software. Same NN symptoms and can not map a drive to the upstairs computer .

7. We made Windows the default client instead of Microsoft Client. Same symptoms.

8. Got rid of dial-up networking . Bound only Netbui to file & printer sharing .

9. One tell tail symptom ( maybe ) . The downatairs computer gets to only one shut down screen and stops . Shuts down properly when we do not have the network drivers loaded .

10. We have PnP enabled and Windows 98 reports no conflicts . All other computer operations function normally .

11. Re-installed WIN98 and have very latest vserver.vxd file.

When we highlight the upstairs computer on NN , sometimes ( after 5 minutes ) we see the shared drive ( C: ) but we can not access it ( hourglass forever ) . I tried Net Use \\Kevin\C: and it hangs forever just like the Windows NN viewing the shared drive does .

In effect , the drive mapping ( one way ) is the only thing not working fast and efficiently . Any ideas ???? We have gone this far and it seems to be a Microsoft registry problem/software problem so it appears solveable i.e. we are not giving up ...

I just glanced through all of the posts, but cannot find one piece of needed information. What version of Windows do you have running on each of the computers? Larry

Both computers have WIN 98 SE . Windows vrs networking ??

Try sharing the CD-ROM drive upstairs (with a CD in it) and see if the downstairs computer can get at it. There is a reason for doing this... Larry

Found this on another forum . Not exactly the same but similar in the main problem of one drive mapping. Just posted so no answer yet .

".Amberley - 09:40pm May 30, 2001 EDT

I previously used 3COM 10MB phoneline networking without problem. I had DSL installed and decided to share the connection through a Linksys router. To do this I set up the Main computer to connect to the router via ethernet. I then hooked up a Netgear PE102 bridge to the 2nd port of the router. I used this bridge to then connect via phoneline to an "upstairs" machine. Thought everything would work. So here is the problem. Both machines can "see" each other in Network Neighborhood. But only the upstairs machine can browse through the drives of the downstairs machine and not vice versa. All drives are shared. I have IPX/SPX, NetBuie and TCP/IP installed on both machines. I cannot ping from one machine to the other, but NetDiag works in both directions using IPX/SPX. The DHCP list in the router shows both machines. Everything seems normal except when I select the upstairs machine from Network Neighborhood on the downstairs machine, I get the following message "\\machine2 is not accessible This device does not exist on the network". I have tried wiring the upstairs machine directly to the PE102 thinking there could be a problem with the phonewiring. No luck. I have run out of ideas. Anyone with any ideas would be most appreciated. "

The reason I asked him to check the CD-ROM is that the problem he is having can be caused by using a third party product to partition the hard disk drive. Larry

Tried everything that I could think of. We solved the shutdown problem on the downstairs computer. There is a WIN98 problem and a Microsoft fix for it. Apparently the downstairs computer broadcasts to the upstairs computer on shutdown . If the upstairs computer does not respond it hangs the shutdown process. This is the fix :
http://www.microsoft.com/windows98/downloads/contents/wurecommended/s_wufeatured/win98se/

We shared the cdrom drive upstairs but could not map to it from downstairs . Yet Net view \\Upstairs showed the two shares ( disk and cdrom ) . Yet when we click on the NN icon for them it "hour glasses forever" . \\upstairs\share hangs forever also ..

Since the shutdown problem was caused by the upstairs computer not responding to a netbios broadcast , we are not 100% sure the upstairs computer is not the problem !! However , the upstairs computer works perfectly in every respect including reading the downstairs cdrom drive etc .

We have decided to give up on WIN98 and install WIN 2000 client on the downstairs computer. If that works , we know WIN98 or the registry is the culprit . We could bring in a 3rd computer to prove its not the upstairs computer not handling netbios broadcasts correctly even though it has no problem in one directional broadcasts . To be continued ...

To put closure to this issue and to thank Larry for his efforts , here are the last details . WIN98 was the culprit. Either all our experimentation corrupted the registry or WIN 98 could not handle the D-link drivers with that motherboard and particular harware/IRQ's or whatever. We solved the problem by upgrading to WIN 2000 . Now everything (Network ) works as it should BOTH WAYS . Same D-link drivers , same upstairs computer , same phone lines - just a different OS . Microsoft WIN 98 networking is not an exact science ...

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