Networking Woes 10.6.6 / RTL8111E

[WaxTrax!]

I have spent days trying to figure out the solutions to my problems with no luck, so I wanted to see if anyone here had any ideas.

 

I have 10.6.6 loaded on a Gigabyte GA-X58-USB3 which has a RTL8111E ethernet. For the most part, everything works just fine except for the Ethernet. I have tried multiple kexts for the card with no luck.

 

The problems are that while it can get on the Internet just fine, it only connects to my gigabit router at 100 megabit speeds. But the strange thing is that OSX reports that it is connecting at 1 Gbps! But the indicator light on both the ethernet port and the router show it's actually connecting at 100. This is with all of the different kexts I've tried. It's not the cable because the same cable connects at a gigabit with a laptop.

 

The other major problem is that Windows SMB networking is not happening. Despite having the sharing set up and no firewall present, I cannot connect to the Mac from Windows, and when it comes to connecting to the Windows box from the Mac, I can only do CIFS, not SMB. Additionally, the performance of copying files from the Mac to Windows is absolutely terrible -- much below even the 100 megabits that it is actually connected at.

 

AFP connectivity works just fine. If only there was an AFP client for Windows then I could at least work around the problem, but I haven't been able to find one (note: AFP client, not server).

 

Anyone have any ideas? Any help is tremendously appreciated :-) Thanks

[imrazor]

A few points to begin with. To the best of my knowledge CIFS and SMB are essentially the same thing, though CIFS is a new standard. How are you trying to access the Mac from Windows? Make sure your Mac's name is less than 15 characters and has no spaces or special characters (look in System Preferences>Sharing at the top of the window. From Windows, don't try browsing for the Hack, but go to Start>Run, and type in double backslash, then the Hackintosh's name. (So you'd access a Hack named "MyHack" on Windows with Start>Run, then typing in \\MyHack.)

 

Also, the throughput you see in Activity Monitor are in Megabytes, not Megabits. Thus 9MB/sec (what I typically get) in Activity Monitor is really 72Megabits/sec, close to the theoretical throughput of Fast Ethernet (100Mbps.) I can't address why your card comes up at 100Mbps instead of 1Gbps; what happens when you boot up Windows on that box?

 

As a final note, one trick that has repeatedly helped me with Realtek issues on a Hackintosh is to enable the Network Boot ROM in the BIOS.

[WaxTrax!]

I very recently sold my 2009 iMac to put together a Hack based on an i7-950 and a Gigabyte X58-USB3, so I'm pretty good with networking between Mac and Windows, so that's why its even more baffling that it isn't working properly.

 

From Windows I've tried both \\HackName and \\HackIPAddress with no luck. Just to double-check, under the Sharing preferences, I have SMB turned on with the username checked. But here's something else I just noticed that may be part of the overall problem -- I keep turning off FTP access, but then when I restart the computer and go back into the sharing preferences, it is enabled again.

 

I did try enabling the boot rom based on your suggestion, but no changes occurred.

 

Weird stuff. This networking thing is the only thing keeping me from a 100% awesome Hackintosh :-)

 

Thanks for the reply.

[WaxTrax!]

This is strange as hell because I've never encountered this sort of thing before, but I did finally find a solution to this problem, in case anyone else comes upon this thread.

 

To fix it, I went into the BIOS and there's a built-in LAN cable testing section. I ran the test and it re-certified my cable as capable of 1 Gbps. Ever since I did that, I have had full gigabit speeds with no problem.

[neil43]

WaxTrax that is a good tip. I would never have thought to look in the BIOS for a solution for this problem.