Networking :: Realtek 8139 in Dell
There have been a number of posts from folks Realtek 8139 cards that were not able to access their network or internet. The solution seems to be turning off Plug & Play in the BIOS.
I have a Dell Dimension 4500S which, according to both my examination of the BIOS setup menu options and Dell's support, does not have the ability to turn off PnP at the BIOS level. 
(I can and did turn off PnP in Windows to no avail).
Can anyone tell me a way to get PnP turned off so I can have DSL access net?
Thanks.
Perhaps the latest version of your bios will have this feature?
Update yuor bios and see.
Realtek cards are pretty standard stuff so they should work fine.
However, most of those plug n play problems refer to old ISA based IO cards.
Your Dell is a pretty new machine with PCI or integrated networking so I doubt that plug n play is the problem.
But I could be wrong.
If you type
lspci
on a blank line, what do you see?
Thanks to you both.
1) Tried this on two Dells now. Got updated BIOS from Dell for the 4500S. No change. The other machine (a 2400) had the same problem. Unfortunately the BIOS update from Dell for the 2400 only can be imaged to a floppy and that machine has no floppy!! 
The 2400's BIOS update notes does make reference to fixing an issue with NICs and Linux. Not sure if there's a floppy controller onboard to connect to so I can try to update if I really start pulling out my hair. (seems like a LOT of work)
2) The 4500S is circa 2000 and the 2400 is circa 2002. I believe the GVC/Realtek cards are PCI. I'll post lspci tomorrow AM.
Thanks again.
- MSK
OK Got one working (4500S - my main PC in the office = VERY bad idea to mess with) and appear to have messed up the hard drive of the other (2400).
4500S (for the reference of all who search here later): Since I was running the Live CD without copying toram, I booted "dsl toram". Once I did that, I had internet access. [Note something that may be totally unrelated: All was fine in that session until I started to have an "azerty" keyboard (hadn't heard of until this morning), so I shut the system. Then the system wouldn't even start BIOS - not even the BIOS splash screen. A friend with a cooler head suggested unplugging for a minute; now works fine. Maybe a remnant from yesterday's BIOS update. Ain't broke; ain't fixing it.]
2400: Feeling good about resolving the 4500S, I tried to boot to ram on the 2400. This time it didn't work. So I "cat lspci > lspcioutput". File existed. Felt a little newbie pride. So I proceeded to try to copy it to the local hd (something like "cat lspcioutput > /mnt/hda1" or /mnt/hda2 - don't recall which; one was read-only). Confirmed that lspcioutput was there and shut down, removing the DSL CD.
That's when things went bad.
I get the BIOS splashscreen, but instead of windows booting I just get a blinking cursor in the top left. I can boot to the DSL CD which tells me that it can't mount hda1 or hda2. I even tried unplugging for a while.
Did I mess up my local HD's windows by copying the file?
And of course, I still don't understand the net problem on the 2400. (By the way, during the day yesterday I started to run Debian's netinst CD, but didn't do any writing to the HD. Debian's installer couldn't find local DHCP - may not have recognized the NIC either.)
Thank you for any help you can provide.
- MSK
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