Aspire ZC-700G cannot maintain wired Internet connection

I just received a ZC-700G from a friend; I am cleaning it up so I can donate it to a local non-profit. Everything appears to work except the wired Ethernet connection - it will not maintain an Internet connection. I have tried everything I can think of: different wires, different connections on the router, uninstall and reinstall device, re-install driver, and a few other tips I found on the Internet - none of them worked. Other computers connected to the same router are working fine and the Aspire's wireless connection (albeit slow) does connect. I even tried disabling the wireless card to see if there was some sort of conflict going on with the wired connection but that did not help either.

The computer had Win 10 Home on it when I received it; I upgraded it to Pro and performed all of the Win updates. The wired connection was not working correctly when I got the computer; I performed the upgrades with hopes that one of them would resolve the issue.

The wired device is a Realtek PCIe GBE family controller; I don't know if that is standard in these machines so I thought I would list it.

I searched this site looking for answers; I found one post with some suggestions that did not help. Thanks in advance for any assistance.

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billsey

As you found that model has a Realtek RTL8111GA-CG Gigabit Ethernet controller chip on the motherboard. The RJ-45 socket is surface mount and soldered directly to the MB, so there is unlikely to be a mechanical reason for the problem. You've tried multiple cables so it's not likely to be a problem with the cable latching fully into place. It's possible for the issue to be software though, are there notwork monitoring or VPN drivers installed? Sometimes they can get in the way of the normal TCP/IP stack.

oldsports

Billsey,

Thanks for your response. I do not see any VPN drivers or network monitoring apps.

I did not perform a clean-install of the operating system because I did not want to have to find and load all of the Acer device drivers. Instead, I created a new user admin account for the non-profit and deleted the account and files of my friend who donated the computer. Next, I uninstalled all of the Acer apps that I could find that I felt were not needed and then I upgraded the operating system to Win 10 Pro. Since I was having problems with the Ethernet controller, I did find a newer driver on Realtek's website so I updated it; unfortunately that did not help. I suppose that there could be a VPN driver or network monitoring app that I did not recognize that is still running, but I thought I was fairly thorough when I uninstalled the Acer apps. Did Acer install a VPN driver and/or network monitoring app that was not developed by Acer? I could start over with a clean-install of the OS, but I was not sure that would guarantee that the Ethernet controller would work.

I did notice that the BIOS was version R01-A4 and the latest is R01-B3. I did not think that the BIOS would impact the Ethernet controller but I guess I could be wrong. Would you recommend that I flash the BIOS?

Thanks!

billsey

Yeah, it's unlikely the BIOS would have anything to do with the Ethernet controller function. Ethernet sockets, just as with the older phone jacks on modems, are a potential trouble spot if you've ever had a lightning storm nearby. You can easily get enough voltage differential on the Ethernet cable to zap a port. Ace didn't ship any software that would put the extra drivers in that a VPN or netmon type app would. Those you would see if you brought up properties on the port. For instance, when I bring up Properties on one of the Ethernet ports on my web server I see "Microsoft Network Monitor 3 Driver" bound to the hardware. I remember when I had a Cisco VPN Client installed it also bound a VPN driver, which actually kept changing the IP address...

I think it's worthwhile to try and discover if it's failing due to hardware or just a software configuration issue. When it drops connection do any Event Viewer errors show up? While it's down what do you see in command prompt with an "ipconfig /all" for that port? What do you see with the same command when it's up?

oldsports

Billsey,

I am not sure why, but the Ethernet controller seems to be working now. Last week I did not have time to work on the computer, but this morning I had some time to try out your suggestions. When I turned the computer on, it maintained the Ethernet connection at 1 Gbps. I turned it on about 3 hours ago and have left it running - the connection has not dropped yet. The only thing I can think of is that the computer did install some updates when I turned it on and it required a re-start. I did not pay attention to what the updates were but I do not believe that they involved the Ethernet driver because it is the same version that I installed last week when I was having the problem.

While the computer seems to be working, it is somewhat slow. I read a number of comments online about how slow this machine is, so I guess I am experiencing what others have found. I do plan to take the RAM to 8GB and install an SSD which should help.

One thing I have not figured out is why the reported Internet speed on the computer is slower than expected. I have 200Mbps service from my ISP. I ran my ISP's internet speed test on the Aspire computer and it only reads about 45 Mbps. When I performed the test on another computer that is connected to the same switch as the Aspire computer, I get readings over 200 Mbps. I have tried using different cables, but the result is the same. Is there some setting for the Ethernet driver that I need to change so the computer gets the full 200 Mbps?

Thanks!

billsey

Fire up Resource Monitor and look at the network usage. There's a chance you have something in the background that's using a portion of the bandwidth. Also look at the other stats, if there's not enough CPU, memory or disk it can affect network performance. Especially anti-virus packages tend to do that.

oldsports

Billsey,

There are no anti-virus programs (other than Windows Security) installed on the computer. I ran Resource Monitor while performing the Internet speed test several times; here are my observations:

Network - My browser was the only heavy user of network bandwidth. There were a few other processes using bandwidth, but it was extremely small usage.
Disk - Peaked at 10-11MB/sec Disk I/O, 22% Highest Active Time. Not sure what to make of this statistic.
Memory - There is 4GB RAM installed. Before running the test, 47% is used with about 310MB free. During the test, it peaks at 52% used and 0 MB free.
CPU - Before running the test, the CPU usage is 7-8% running at 100-110% maximum frequency. During the test, the CPU usage peaked at 110% at 129% maximum frequency. I noticed that once the CPU usage peaked, it started to decline for the balance of the test. The bandwidth peaked at around 90 Mbps when the CPU usage peaked and then started dropping as the CPU usage dropped.

The 90Mbps is much better than the 45Mbps I was getting last week, but it is still does not match the 200Mbps service I have. As stated before, I consistently get readings over 200Mbps on other computers connected to the same switch as the Aspire, so I expect to see something close to that number. Two things that are different versus last week:

I used Google Chrome for the Internet speed test versus Firefox. It appears that Chrome records a higher bandwidth. I tested this on other computers and saw that Chrome consistently reported higher numbers than Firefox.
I uninstalled and re-installed my Ethernet device. Since I had installed the new driver on top of the old one, I thought I would try to do a "clean-install" of the driver to see if that helped.

I know it's not an "apples-to-apples" comparison, I ran Resource Monitor while running the Internet speed test on my laptop (Intel i7, 3.0GHz, 8GB RAM) while connected to the switch. The CPU usage was 3-5% running at 40% maximum frequency before the test; during the test the usage peaked at 65% running at 114% maximum frequency. Memory usage was about the same as the Aspire in terms of percentage (47% before the test, 53% during the test).

Thoughts?

Thanks!

billsey

Disk IO seems to be pretty normal, when it's slowing things down you'll see it at 100% ... unless it's being used for swap space because RM doesn't track swap access well. 47% memory used with 310MB free seems to be counting the 4GB swap file as part of the total memory. So 4GB actual ram and 4GB swap is 8GB, 47% of 8GB is a little under 4GB. As soon as it uses the extra 310MB it switches from running everything out of memory to running a mix of some in memory and some swapped out to the drive. That gives a huge performance drop, even if the drive is an SSD. Your model supports 8GB of ram, using DDR3L SO-DIMMs at 1600MHz. I'd suggest either slimming your environment down to more like 2-3GB in use or upgrading the ram to the full 8GB. That should get things back to workable. While you are in there an upgrade of the HDD to a SSD would also give a huge performance increase...

Now, since you are just getting this up well enough to donate you might look into donating the cost of the upgrades in cash, then letting them buy the parts and you can install them. That will give you a bigger deduction when April rolls around again.

oldsports

Billsey,

Thanks for the input. I had already planned to upgrade to the full 8GB and an SSD as a relatively cheap way to speed up the computer in general; it's good to know that this may also help with the Internet speed. After I complete the upgrades, I will re-test the computer and report back.

billsey

Great! I'm looking forward to what you see after the upgrades.

oldsports

Billsey,

Over the weekend I installed the upgrades - 256GB SSD and an additional 4GB RAM stick to get to 8GB total. It was fairly easy - I found a YouTube video that showed how to open up the computer. However, once I re-started the computer, the issue with the Ethernet controller returned - it will not maintain an Internet connection! Wireless seems to work fine (albeit slowly). I used a Seagate program to copy the original disk onto the SSD; the process ended with no errors so I don't see how that would have made any difference.

When I had the issue the first time, I did nothing that I am aware of that would have fixed it. After leaving the computer alone for several days, it started to work. I am stumped - any ideas?

Thanks.

billsey

It looks like we need to revisit errors on the LAN port. Does Event Viewer capture anything when the connection drops? Does Device Manager show any errors or warnings at the same time? What are the results of an "IPCONFIG /ALL" in a command prompt while in the error state? I'm hoping one of those will show some anomaly that can point us in a direction. I'm a little afraid we'll find the port has been zapped at some time in the past and is now showing the results...

oldsports

Billsey,

Believe it or not, everything is working again. Here is the story...

I decided to perform a clean-install of Win 10 Pro. I figured that if a clean-install did not work, then it must be a hardware issue. I fired up my desktop so I could make a Win 10 Pro install DVD and saw that I had no Internet connection! Two of my laptops were connected (wired) and they had Internet connections so I was puzzled. I quickly checked to see what type of Ethernet controller I had in the desktop - it is a Realtek PCIe Gigabit just like the Acer. I had not turned on my desktop in a while, but I am sure I had an Internet connection the last time I used it. Could it be that some type of electrical incident knocked out the Realtek controllers but left the laptop controllers (Intel) unaffected?

Ignoring my desktop's issue for the moment, I decided to go ahead with my idea to perform a clean-install on the Acer. Fortunately, I had an ISO version of Win 10 Pro on my desktop so all I needed to do was burn the DVD. I burned the DVD and performed a clean-install on the Acer but the problem remained.

I would have given up at that point, but since my desktop was also having an issue I decided to keep at it. After searching the Internet for hours and trying various "fixes" that did not work for me, I decided to assume that the computers were OK and maybe there was something else wrong. When I ran the Network Troubleshooter on both computers, I got the "Default gateway not available" error message. I was not sure how this could be since the two laptops were connected to the same router and their Internet access was fine. Nonetheless, I decided to reset the router to see if what affect this would have. As soon as the router reset was completed, both the Acer and my desktop had a solid Internet connection! I have no idea what the router reset could have done, but I'm not going to question it. I left both computers on for several hours and they have not lost their connection yet.

The other good news is that the Internet speed on the Acer appears to be normal. When I ran the speed test (using Microsoft IE), I got upload speeds close to 200Mbps. For some reason, download speeds were 6-7Mbps when I expect them to be closer to 10. I am going to keep the Acer on my bench for a few more days to ensure that the Internet connection issue does not return before I set it up in the non-profit I am donating it to.

Thanks for all of your help. I hope I don't need it again for this issue!

billsey

Sometimes the routers get confused, usually when they've been running for quite a while with a small memory leak in the firmware. It's the bane of existence for router firmware developers. In your case I would guess that when the memory ran out what broke was the DHCP server function. The laptops didn't need new addresses because they could continue to use their old ones, the desktop and all-in-one both needs to have addresses assigned before they could work. The router reboot go DHCP working again and the two systems were assigned leases.

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