Product

Platform

Operating system

Error

Symptoms

Prinergy 2.0 requires Windows 2000 as well as an updated W2K network device driver, since it seems that the standard driver shipped with W2K and/or the default “Adaptive Technology� setting causes trouble. The driver currently recommended is the IntelPro100. Installing this driver on various Windows 2000 computers running Prinergy has appeared to improve performance and make strange Orbix/network-related problems go away.

Cause

Solution

Note: This driver is only applicable if an IntelPro100 100BaseT network adapter is physically installed in the computer.

Once you’ve downloaded the driver by clicking on it in the Related Links section, below, you should configure the network card on W2K by completing the following procedure:

1. Right click on the "My Network Places" icon on the desktop and select Properties, or go to Start Menu, Settings to bring up the same "Network and Dialup Connections" window.

2. Right click on "Local Area Connection" and select Properties. This gets you to the equivalent of the old NT4 Network control panel.

3. Check that the adapter listed at the top says something like one of the following:

Intel(R) PRO/100B PCI Adapter (TX)

Intel(R)PRO/100+ Management Adapter

Intel(R) PRO PCI Adapter

The display name seems to keep changing with each new OS and driver version, but underneath the covers it is still essentially the same hardware.

4. Check that the actual driver file itself is either e100bnt.sys if NT4 or e100bnt5.sys if W2K. The drivers are in the

%SystemRoot%\System32\drivers directory. (This assumes you are among the 99.99% who only have a single network card.)

5. Click the Configure button.

6. Select the Driver tab.

If the driver date says Oct 99, that's the old driver and you should update it.

7. Click the Update Driver... button to bring up the wizard. Let it "Search for a suitable driver".

8. Deselect all "search locations", and choose only "Specify a location".

9. From the zip file, select the file net82557.inf.

10. Follow the rest of the prompts. It will take a while to load the driver.

On newer hardware, for example, Dell boxes, the dynamic plug and play stuff seems to work and you don't need to reboot for the new driver to get loaded. Older PCs seem to hang, so you may need to reboot anyway, but wait a while before you give up and reboot.

BEFORE you install the new driver, you should shut down Prinergy, etc. since it unloads the driver and basically everything dependent on network services gets the rug pulled out from under it.

11. After you've gotten the new driver loaded, check that the driver date says Jan 2000.

12. Now go to the Advanced tab and there should be a lot more options than with the old driver.

13. Click "Adaptive Technology", and set it to OFF. The default is ON. Turning it OFF generally seems to make network transfers faster, and makes weird Orbix errors go away.

It is recommended that you do the same for NT4 if you have the same Intel EtherPRO/8255x chip-based adapter. Get the updated NT4 driver from the Downloads page of the Networking site.

General network throughput seems to be better after making these two changes, with no ill effects.

Permanent fix:

See also

Networking site

Keywords

networking, Windows 2000

Technical contact(s)

Simon Chen

Submitted by

Simon Chen

Date submitted