Question : Intermittent Lan Disconnect Issue

We have a user running XP pro on a Compac EVO D510 (P4 2g./256mg. Ram).   He is also running the Blackberry Redirector software to forward email from his Outlook (Outlook/OfficePro2002 and Exchange 5.5 server)  to a RIM 957 Handheld.

A few weeks ago (early June) , while out of town in Chicago, he noticed that he was getting a four hour time lag between messages hitting his inbox and being redirected to his handheld.  I restarted the Blackberry Desktop Redirector software and the time lag disappeared.

When I started looking at it, the first thing I came across was three messages in the app log of event viewer on his desktop.....repeated many times at about 30 minute intervals

(Note that I have replaced the user and company name in these entries)

---Source: Blackberry   Event ID 2   "([email protected])ReloadPagerConfig{}failed.
---Source: Blackberry   Event ID 2    "***MAPI***MAPIMailbox::GetNewMessages - GetContentsTable (0x80040115)failed for User
---Source: Blackberry   Event ID 2   "([email protected])GetNewMessages{} failed  ERR_NETWORK_PROBLEM.

These errors started in early May, ran for about a week, stopped for three and then started again in early June about four days before we noticed the Blackberry Time lag.

To make a long story shorter, I got on the phone with Compaq (our Blackberry airtime provider) tech support, who when they got stymied, brought RIM tech support into the equations.  Over the next several days, they had me:

--In Outlook, delete the Mapi profile and recreate it with a different name for the profile (same user in the mailbox settings)
--Do a clean uninstall (including registry entry deletes) of the BlackBerry DeskTop Manager software (which includes the Redirector Module) and reinstalled with latest service packs.
--Ran RIM's dbclean utility, which wipes the Blackberry database and rewrites it.

In each case, the event log errors would disappear for 2/4/6/8 hours, then reappear again.  In the meantime, the blackberry is running fine, no time lag and there are no other apparent problems on the desktop.....just the DAMN event log entries.

Note:  Because the machine must be running 24/7 for the Black berry redirector to do it's stuff, the screen saver is password-protected and set in Display Properties to kick in after 15 min..

Compaq and RIM tech support finally concluded that this is not a Blackberry issue and that the problem is one of intermittant lan disconnect.  That made some sense to me, because several times recently, when the user has been away from his desk for an extended period and I have gone and logged on to his machine, immediately after the desktop has come up, I saw a popup from the Lan icon in the systray that said "Lan connection re-established".  It displayed for 10-15 seconds, then disappeared.

With all of that in mind, I went into the registry to the "Lan Auto-Disconnect Timeout" subkey, which turned out to be set to what I guess is the XP default....15 minutes.  I reset the DWORD Value to 0xfffffff,  which should effectively disable it.

Net result:  no event log entries for three hours, Then they started again.

The Problem:.....no obvious issues on the machine, everything seems to run fine, at least for now....just the persistant event log entries that I would dearly (out of stubborn pride?) like to get rid of.

THE QUESTION (sorry to be so long winded getting to it, but the devil is in the details):  What other causes (hardware? software? XP/MS quirk?) of intermittant Lan disconnectivity should I be looking at?

I have thought of the obvious...a failing NIC, but the time frame of the repeat of the event log errors is so regular, and I have seen no other symptoms of NIC failure............

Answer : Intermittent Lan Disconnect Issue

Is it using DHCP? If so, make sure the DHCP server isn't leasing his IP for only 3 hours, or there could be a setting in his PC that would automatically renew the lease every 3 hours. However, this would only be a very tiny window of disconnectivity, and probably would not cause the symptoms you mentioned.

You may try installing a new (different model) NIC, and seeing if the problem persists. I have seen some network cards really hate certain motherboards, and do weird stuff, basically dropping connections randomly. Again, it seems like this is a regular occurence, and you could set a clock by it, so I'm not sure.

One other thing is to check the power options, and make sure the NIC does NOT power off after a certain time. (Make it "Always on"). It probably wouldn't hurt to set the whole thing to stay on.

Good luck,
David