A few weeks back, I was having trouble with my Ethernet adapter. Despite it showing up in Network and Sharing Center as providing "Internet access", it was providing no access whatsoever. (Fortunately, I also have a WiFi adapter, which was and is working fine.) Windows network diagnostics provided no useful information, only stating that "there might be a problem with the network adapter." I reinstalled my Ethernet drivers; it did not help.
Looking at the adapter properties revealed that bytes were being sent, but nothing was ever received. I checked the Ethernet cable itself; it was working correctly. I tried disabling some of the extra bridge protocols on the adapter (like VMWare's explosion-at-the-protocol-factory and the VirtualBox bridge thing), but that didn't help either.
Eventually, I tried adding a static IP for that adapter, despite it getting a perfectly valid one from DHCP. That fixed the problem! However, I still didn't know what had originally caused it. I only found that out later, when I installed VirtualBox on a different computer and saw that it soon started showing the same issue. Assigning a static IP on the Ethernet adapter fixed that machine as well. (The other machine also had a working WiFi adapter.)
So, the only conclusion I can draw from this experience is that installing VirtualBox breaks the Ethernet adapter when you have more than one real adapter, unless you set a static IP.
No comments:
Post a Comment