Auto negotiate problem - network keeps dropping

[snoqwalker]

I have an HP Pavilion Desktop (still on hardware warranty for a few more months). I've always had great luck with HP products and with their support. But this time, I'm running into a wall with their support dept. I have had an issue w/the (wired) internet connection on this PC since I got it. When going to any web page, often I get an error that the Internet is not connected. In network properties, I can watch as the network actually connects and disconnects every few seconds. I can temporarily fix it by going to the NIC card's advanced properties and changing Speed & Duplex to 10 Mbps half or full (i.e., turn off Auto Negotiate). But it keeps getting reset back to auto negotiate by Windows or something (not sure what is doing it), which is frustrating.

I have found enough information on this forum and general searches of my internet engine to know that it is a problem with auto negotiate, and thus a hardware issue. But trying to convince HP support of this is another story. They insist that it is likely a software issue and that I pay for their "Smart Friend" service to go through all the troubleshooting steps ($14 per month fee + initial $35 startup fee). I don't believe this is a software problem, and refuse to pay this money. I am going to try a different ethernet cable "just in case" (addendum -- changing cable did not help).

Does anyone have any other suggestions as to how to definitively show that it's a problem (or not) with the NIC?

As a side note, I ran a network component diagnostic test (via pressing F2 while booting) and this is the message that came up (but no error code):
"UEFI Networking does not appear to be supported or enabled on this system. Please check the BIOS settings to make sure UEFI network option ROMs are enabled and that UEFI network boot is enabled."

PS - I did update the BIOS, just a few minutes ago, yet the network is still dropping after the BIOS update. The software driver on the Realtek PCIe Family NIC is also up to date.

Update - 9/24/16: Thank you for your suggestions. HP would not accept that booting from Linux USB results in same network dropping issue as proof that it is the NIC (although that was a great idea - thanks!). Their front end support simply won't talk to me about it being hardware-related (and thus, warranty-covered) until I pay $99 to go through their SmartFriend software support to diagnose the issue. I refuse to do that. I will live with the workaround of changing the NIC to 100 Mbps Half Duplex on the speed settings. I have also ordered a $11 USB Network adapter, which I am going to see if works better. If it does, I'll try and switch off the built-in NIC altogether and use the USB network connection instead.

Update - 9/26/16 Did what I stated above, and the $11 USB Ethernet adapter worked flawlessly with auto negotiate setting out of the box. Disabled the built-in HP NIC and everything is working great now.

 

[bill001g]

Do you have a actual nic card or is it the port that is built into the motherboard.

Pretty much there is not a lot that can go wrong with these when you look are talking duplex and speed. These are done at a very low hardware level and I doubt there is much firmware or drivers involved.

Generally this is a cable issue but if you have replaced the cable and tried other ports on the router it pretty much leaves the PC as the cause.

Some equipment both the pc and router and switches have "green" settings to try to reduce the power. These can at times cause the port to drop. You want to be sure there are no power save setting in the bios or the OS. See if your router or switch has that feature, unfortunately you can not turn it off in most devices.

Also take a light and look very carefully at the wires in the port but there really is no way to fix it if the wires are bent.

Other than this is likely is a broken port. There are other situations like where you get packet loss that can be software but when the port is actually dropping it almost always is hardware.

 

[slyverine]

burn a linux live cd or a bootable usb stick. If the problem persists it's most propably your NIC. I think it's enough proof for HP since Linux and windows are tottaly different OS and if the NIC has problems in both of them , then it's hardware fault.