Orange blinking light?

[Morelyn]

Hi all.

I've been having trouble with my Comcast (cable) Internet connection. It seems to drop sometimes when I'm away from the computer or randomly at other times.

I was talking to a Comcast tech help person who asked me to look at where my Internet cable plugs into the computer and tell him what color the light was. I told him it was an orange blinking light. He said this indicates a NIC that is on its last legs (the light should be green, according to him) and that that might explain my problems. He said I should buy a new NIC (which I have no objection to doing, if it will solve the problem).

So my question for you guys is, is this just BS from someone who doesn't know what the real problem is or is it in fact the truth?

Thanks very much.

[w1r3sp33d]

Orange can mean many different things, probably that it has negotiated a 10Mbps connection. You can look up your NIC model and see what it means, or check out your system logs/current status it will probably give you more clues than some first tier tech saying that your NIC is dying.

[Justin01]

Comcast tech support are a bunch of half wits. I had similar problems, dropped connections, slow speeds, etc, and the phone support had me exchange the modem several times. Finally someone came out and the problem ended up being the in house cabling. More specifically, we had old aluminum switches. Comcast swapped them out, free of charge, with some nice gold ones and problem solved.

As far as the nic card, that was probably erroneous information also. My nic will flash orange if its not receiving a signal when the network cable is plugged in. So before you run out and buy a new nic, as cheap as they are, check your documentation as to what a blinking orange light means.

[soccerdeli]

I found the solution to a similar problem at this url:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811259

How to determine and to recover from Winsock2 corruption in Windows Server 2003, in Windows XP, and in Windows Vista

Carlos.

[oddessy]

I agree with Justin 01 about the Comcast tech support. I had 4 different techs come out to my house before the last one could actually solve and tell me what the problem was.
I was having dropped signals on my modem three or four times a day and I went through the process of restarting the modem to get it to come back on.
The forth tech found the problem at the main connection out in the front yard near the sidewalk where there is a pedestal. This a green colored plastic tower that holds the amplifier to send the signal to me and my neighbors. The amplifier was sending a weak signal which was causing me to lose connection often on the internet.
If I was you I would have a Comcast tech look at the connection where the amplifier sends the signal. It could be located somewhere near your home and you'll need to be persistent about them looking at and getting it fixed.
They have a meter that should detect where the signal is leaking.
Take care of this problem first and then if you are still not getting the signal you need, then it could possibly be a bad nic card but I haven't heard of them giving an intermittent signal. Either they work or they don't.