DMA 2100 won't connect

[jamawass]

Hi all
Of late my dma 2100 has refused to connect to my htpc. After a year of stable use, it started to fail to connect which would be corrected by a power cycle. This past week it completely refused to connect. I deleted it from wmc and set it up again which was succesful. I left it on but when I returned a few hrs later it had reverted to the "failure to connect screen". I've power cycled it without any success. Any ideas?
I changed my router 2-3 mo ago to an Asus Dark Knight RT-N66U but everything was stable initially.

[barnabas1969]

Wireless or wired?

[slowbiscuit]

If the only change you made was the router that's the first suspect. You could try connecting it to the same switch as your PC (temporarily) and see if the problem goes away.

[jamawass]

Wired. They're on the same switch. The extender is visible on the PC.

[barnabas1969]

Do you have a different switch that you can try?

[jamawass]

No, my entire home is hardwired with gigabit Ethernet. All ports arise from the same switch.

[kingwr]

If you have enough cable, this one could be tested with it and the server connected to a simply 100MB hub. I bought a new gigabit switch and had both the DMA2100s as well as the DirecTV receivers and some other devices cause problems. I think it has to do with flow control. I ended putting the gigabit switch in the office and going to a 100MB switch with a gigabit port for the server (which has flow control enabled on the network card). But honestly I never did any additional investigation on it beyond swapping out the switches.

[foxwood]

Set the NIC on your PC to 100Mb instaed of Gigabit, and see if it helps. That might not be an acceptable solution long term, but it'll at least help you determine if this is a networking issue, or a problem with the Extender itself.

[slowbiscuit]

I'm thinking if it's not able to connect it's not a speed issue, it's something not right in WMC or the extender (or the switch). Speed issues usually result in playback problems. OP your PC is functioning normally network-wise when your extender can't connect, right? Internet and network-share wise? You've also power-cycled the PC and the switch right? Have you moved the extender to a different port on the switch to rule out a flaky port? Go into the DMA's menu when it can't connect and make sure it's getting an IP address too.

Another thing to try is to make an image of your PC with Windows backup or whatever, then temp do a wipe/clean reinstall, add extender and see if problem goes away (i.e. don't restore the image until you're done testing). If it does it's something going on with WMC or the OS, if it doesn't it's probably the extender.

[kingwr]

Yes, my switch problems didn't result in connect problems but slow file transfers and freezing in playback.

[jamawass]

I updated the firmware on the router, rebooted it and the extender now functions normally. So it was most likely a router issue.