K8n neo2-f nf3 ultra board - onboard nic problem? Please post your experiences

Question

I just ordered the k8n neo2-f nf3 ultra board, with a venice 3500+ chip, from newegg.  I saw various posts on the mobo, however, from people who said the onboard nic doesn't work right out of the box, that they had to go in and manually enter the mac address in Windows that they retrieved from a sticker on the parallel port.
I can deal with a problem like that easily, but I find it hard to believe MSI would ship such a defective board design as that.  Is this really the commonplace experience with this board?  Please post your experience with this board if you've used it or had experience with it

Answer 1

Quote from: Scubahard on 15-September-05, 13:22:52
Okay I typed my address under the "network addapters" and I still do not have any internet access.  I even tried to reboot...and nothing.  My computer knows when I have a cable hooked up to the port.  It will tell me "network cable connected" or "network cable unplugged."  I hooked up my netgear network card and I was able to get online. 
Should I be messing with the "authentication" tab and/or the IEEE 802.1x setting?
My windows 2k computer has a broadcast "node type" while me K*N Neo2 board does not have a line for node type (under ipconfig).  Also my XP computer does not have a line that will tell me the values for: DHCP Server and DNS Servers.  It also has a no value for the default gateway line.  It DOES have a value for the "Connection Specific DNS Suffix".  It is for comcast. 
I hope all this is not too confusing.  I was trying to list all the questionable settings.  What should I try next? 
Thanks!
Well, if you're wondering about the 'dhcp server', 'dns servers', 'default gateway', etc., that is all in the 'Network Connections' folder which can be reached from the Control Panel.  To get to those settings, you right-click on the 'local area connection' that corresponds to the onboard lan, and click 'properties'.  Then, select 'network protocol(tcp/ip)' in the list of networking components and click the 'properties' button.  That will bring up the set of tabs where you can set those properties (although there is no 'dhcp server' address setting, just the option to either specify an address or use dhcp to automatically assign an address).
I get the impression, though, that you're saying if you slap in a pci network card, it connects right away, so I doubt any of those settings are needed (unless you left out the part about going into the tcp/ip settings for the pci nic and specifying an address, etc., which I doubt you did).  Have you considered contacting msi tech support on the problem?  If it's a new board, I'm sure you're entitled to free tech support.  It seems like, with all of the chatter on these boards over this issue, they should be well aware of it and be familiar with the ways to 'fix' it.