Ethernet Switch not working - Need for work/school/etc...

[EljahTheFighter]

Hi, everyone. I'm attempting (keyword attempting) to set up a home office/gaming setup type deal. The router I have has exactly ONE outgoing port, so I bought an Ethernet switch and hooked everything up.

One PC? Wired connection works great, just fine. Other? Nada. Nothing. It feels like EVERYTHING has been exhausted trying to get this to work, and I have exacerbated the Ethernet switch's own basic and escalated customer service and troubleshooting, Windows customer service, my ISP's customer service, and even a close work friend who has been working in IT for almost a decade. None of them can figure it out. This has been an issue for over a week.

I got so sick of this I drew a GRAPH in frustration to illustrate what it is I am trying to do. See "hELPME.png" below.

Here is a comprehensive list of everything I have done to try to fix the issue:
- Check and re-check my cables aren't damaged ( they are brand new, bought less than 2 weeks ago )
- Plugged said cables into different Ethernet ports on ALL devices. 
- Verified aforementioned cables work on different devices. They do.
- Ran the whole "ipconfig - release - /flushdns" shtick. Twice.
- Hard reset my entire network, starting at the modem and router by physically unplugging them and plugging them back in, device by device.
- Physically cleaned all ports of any dust.
- Updated and re-downloaded Ethernet and wi-fi drivers. 

 

I'm seriously at my wits end. I -need- this setup to work for my upcoming job or I'm gonna have to rescind my offer letter, my job requires a hardline connection. 

I will be actively monitoring replies and replying quickly, thank you to anyone who looks at this in advance. 
 

[seanondemand]

Oh my god you drew a graph

 

Anyway, just for clarity - either PC’s wired connection works fine, but as long as only one’s plugged in? Have you tried another switch (could be a dud unit)?

[EljahTheFighter]

16 minutes ago, seanondemand said:

Oh my god you drew a graph

 

Anyway, just for clarity - either PC’s wired connection works fine, but as long as only one’s plugged in? Have you tried another switch (could be a dud unit)?

No, not quite. PC 1 on the left works in any port regardless of what else is plugged in. PC 2 on the right WILL NOT connect under any circumstance.

[OddOod]

Welcome to the forums!
 

24 minutes ago, EljahTheFighter said:

Hard reset my entire network

So, to be clear, by "hard reset" you mean you just unplugged and replugged everything with a power cycle? Or did you reset to factory settings, clearing all configs, then rebuilt the network from scratch?

Have you tried a different network switch? Is your managed switch set to pass through DHCP?

[OddOod]

1 minute ago, EljahTheFighter said:

No, not quite. PC 1 on the left works in any port regardless of what else is plugged in. PC 2 on the right WILL NOT connect under any circumstance.

Ah, that's a different beast. Does PC2 work on other networks? It's possibly just a borked networking card. Does your IT friend have a spare ethernet card they can lend you to test?

[OddOod]

Oh, another thing to try would be a clean windows install along with a BIOS reset

If it's plugged into the network, I assume you can't see it in the network by pinging or in whatever EERO dashboard there is

[Needfuldoer]

Are you sure it's a managed switch?

 

If so, are all the ports configured the same? (They're not divided up across multiple VLANs?)

[EljahTheFighter]

12 minutes ago, OddOod said:

Welcome to the forums!
 

So, to be clear, by "hard reset" you mean you just unplugged and replugged everything with a power cycle? Or did you reset to factory settings, clearing all configs, then rebuilt the network from scratch?

Have you tried a different network switch? Is your managed switch set to pass through DHCP?

1. I rebuilt the network from scratch. Everything.

2. I don't have another network switch and money is tight. I needed this one to work. I can't configure the managed switch set to pass through DHCP, not sure what you mean...it was advertised as plug and play, just connect the cables and you're done...

[EljahTheFighter]

14 minutes ago, OddOod said:

Ah, that's a different beast. Does PC2 work on other networks? It's possibly just a borked networking card. Does your IT friend have a spare ethernet card they can lend you to test?

No, no spare cards. PC2 works wirelessly on the eero but not wired. 

[EljahTheFighter]

5 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Are you sure it's a managed switch?

 

If so, are all the ports configured the same? (They're not divided up across multiple VLANs?)

I'm 100% positive the ports are the same but I do not know what you mean by VLANs...

[OddOod]

 

18 minutes ago, EljahTheFighter said:

I do not know what you mean by VLANs

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/switches/what-is-a-managed-switch.html
 

24 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Are you sure it's a managed switch?

 

If so, are all the ports configured the same? (They're not divided up across multiple VLANs?)

Nah, it's unmanaged. 

Yeah, I'd see if you can borrow some hardware to narrow the problem down. Otherwise, definitely try it on a different wired network and try a clean install with reset bios.

[EljahTheFighter]

4 minutes ago, OddOod said:

 

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/switches/what-is-a-managed-switch.html
 

Nah, it's unmanaged. 

Yeah, I'd see if you can borrow some hardware to narrow the problem down. Otherwise, definitely try it on a different wired network and try a clean install with reset bios.

I'm sorry, that isn't quite right. It is a managed switch. It was advertised as one, and the CSRs I contacted confirmed it is a managed switch.

[Alvin853]

Can you temporarily connect PC2 directly to the router, leaving out the switch entirely? It sounds like the LAN interface on PC2 is borked, is there any configuration where LAN works on PC2? I hope you didn't set a static IP on PC2?

[Zando_]

4 minutes ago, EljahTheFighter said:

I'm sorry, that isn't quite right. It is a managed switch. It was advertised as one, and the CSRs I contacted confirmed it is a managed switch.

Log in to the management portal and look at the port settings, make sure they're all set to the default LAN (to simply answer your earlier question about VLANs, they're just a separate LAN done via logic instead of separate physical hardware). 

[EljahTheFighter]

5 minutes ago, Alvin853 said:

Can you temporarily connect PC2 directly to the router, leaving out the switch entirely? It sounds like the LAN interface on PC2 is borked, is there any configuration where LAN works on PC2? I hope you didn't set a static IP on PC2?

Huh. This is new. We may be getting somewhere.

I have plugged PC2 -directly to the router- and left out the switch, and there is still no connection. 

[EljahTheFighter]

2 minutes ago, Zando_ said:

Log in to the management portal and look at the port settings, make sure they're all set to the default LAN (to simply answer your earlier question about VLANs, they're just a separate LAN done via logic instead of separate physical hardware). 

Management portal, sorry?

[Alvin853]

2 minutes ago, EljahTheFighter said:

Huh. This is new. We may be getting somewhere.

I have plugged PC2 -directly to the router- and left out the switch, and there is still no connection. 

Well then the problem clearly isn't with the switch, so we should stop worrying about the switch altogether. Also the problem is not with the router, since it works with the switch and PC1. The issue is with PC2. Can you copy&paste the output of "ipconfig /all"? There may be some identifying information in there though, without knowing what exactly to look for it's going to be tricky to tell you which information we need and which we don't. I think you can leave out anything that is hexadecimal and doesn't start with fe80:: plus stuff like computer name etc if you don't want to share that info.

[Zando_]

4 minutes ago, EljahTheFighter said:

Management portal, sorry?

It's a managed switch. Figure out the Switch's IP (you should be able to look on the Eevo settings and see LAN devices) and go there, then log in and you can change settings. I don't have a TP-Link device up and running rn, but here's what it looks like on our Netgear switches, the VLAN section is under the Switching tab:

 

TP-Link's UI looks a little different but things should be in similar places. 

[EljahTheFighter]

9 minutes ago, EljahTheFighter said:

Huh. This is new. We may be getting somewhere.

I have plugged PC2 -directly to the router- and left out the switch, and there is still no connection. 

 

Hold on to your hats, I found something.

Check this out.

 

 

[EljahTheFighter]

2 minutes ago, Zando_ said:

It's a managed switch. Figure out the Switch's IP (you should be able to look on the Eevo settings and see LAN devices) and go there, then log in and you can change settings. I don't have a TP-Link device up and running rn, but here's what it looks like on our Netgear switches, the VLAN section is under the Switching tab:

 

TP-Link's UI looks a little different but things should be in similar places. 

My Eero says it isn't connected. Nothing on LAN device list.

[Alvin853]

10 minutes ago, EljahTheFighter said:

 

Hold on to your hats, I found something.

Check this out.

 

 

That's obviously going to be a problem, stop worrying about the switch and fix your device drivers first. Let windows auto-install the correct driver if the installer you found online doesn't work, or use Snappy Driver Installer (the only driver installer I know of that is actually not a scam, but does what you expect it to do)

[Zando_]

4 minutes ago, EljahTheFighter said:

My Eero says it isn't connected. Nothing on LAN device list.

That's... odd. But I've never used an Eero before so I have no idea what it's doing. All my experience is with Ubiquiti, Linksys, Netgear, and TP-Link. 

12 minutes ago, EljahTheFighter said:

 

Hold on to your hats, I found something.

Check this out.

 

That'd do it. As @Alvin853 said, take a crack at getting the correct drivers working. Intel has them here: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/18293/intel-network-adapter-driver-for-windows-10.html. 

[OddOod]

2 hours ago, EljahTheFighter said:

Updated and re-downloaded Ethernet and wi-fi drivers

Yeah, looks like this didn't work

 

[EljahTheFighter]

30 minutes ago, Alvin853 said:

That's obviously going to be a problem, stop worrying about the switch and fix your device drivers first. Let windows auto-install the correct driver if the installer you found online doesn't work, or use Snappy Driver Installer (the only driver installer I know of that is actually not a scam, but does what you expect it to do)

HALLELUJAH! It was a bad driver incorrectly configured by the driver installer I -was- using. Every time I tried to download the new drivers my driver installer overrid me and downloaded the old crap one, thus it kept breaking. Uninstalling the old one and manually downloading the Intel complete pack ( here: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/15084/intel-ethernet-adapter-complete-driver-pack.html?wapkw=Intel%20network%20adapter%20driver%20for%20windows%2010%20professional ) fixed it instantly. 

We're all done here - thank you so much to everyone! Kudos!

[OddOod]

*always* grab the driver yourself. Driver managers are by and large garbage. I'll have to look into Snappy, but taking the time and grabbing the proper drivers is worth it. 

As for your switch, it's either not a Litewave 5 or it's unmanaged. (pardon the typo in the search)