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IBM Thinkcentre M82 from Refurb.io Won't Connect to Updating Sites

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IBM Thinkcentre M82 from Refurb.io Won't Connect to Updating Sites

I bought an IBM Thinkcentre M82 from Refurb.io and it arrived last Wednesday. It's this one: http://ca.refurb.io/products/ibm-thinkc ... mlgN.aQKUw There's a bizarre problem with it and I have absolutely no idea how it can be fixed other than either living with it or returning the desktop. Right away when it arrived, we wanted to update it. And it wouldn't connect to Windows Update. It also wouldn't download the software necessary to get BIOS updates, etc. from Lenovo. Yet, in general it worked fine -- it connected to the Internet, it connected to our home network, no problem with that. Keep in mind that nothing was added by me on the computer the first time I tried to get the updates -- no antivirus program, no nothing. I disabled the Windows Defender and the Windows Firewall. Made no difference at all. I searched for the error code (80072EE2) and it suggested firewalls and maybe that the Windows server was busy. So we tried Windows Update on our other hardwired desktop at the same time and it had no problem connecting. The only other firewall was in our router (Actiontec 1200 from Telus) and I completely disabled that and it made no difference.

So then for some reason, I decided to try our USB wireless network dongle that we use on another computer. And when I used that, I was able to update everything normally. Windows Update and updates from the Lenovo site. And then -- and here's the weird one -- I thought about bypassing the router completely and plugging in the ethernet cable directly and when I did that, it also worked fine! So that suggested strongly that it was the router.

Yet, after resets of everything, a lengthy call with a senior escalation dude from Telus who tried everything he could think of and even the replacement of the router today to a completely different model, the same problem persists. It will not connect to Windows Update or (presumably) any other update sites.

You'd think "oh, it's probably the network card" or some such thing. That's what I thought obviously. But doesn't the fact that it works when the ethernet is plugged in directly from the wall kind of exclude that or that something's wrong with the computer in general? But if there was something wrong with the router, why didn't it work even when the router was replaced?

You could say big deal, so you can't do updating unless you plug in your wireless dongle and/or plug in from the wall and everything else works. Except that I've done very little with this computer so far in an attempt to fix this weird issue. Who knows what the ramifications are of this issue? It could be something that ends up being more serious as time goes on. Obviously I should be able to use updating sites. This should work.

So I was hoping maybe someone on here could suggest something and help me fix an issue that even a senior tech agent at Telus couldn't fix. I know that a few people here bought this same desktop on sale recently. Does anyone else have this issue? And if so, how did you fix it?

Anyway, any help or suggestions would be appreciated.
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Have you updated to the latest network drivers?

Also try disabling IPV6 (Just uncheck it in network properties) on your Ethernet card and Automatically Detect Settings in IE Proxy Settings.
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We have the latest network drivers. Don't we need IPV6 for our home network? And we never use Internet Explorer, we're using Firefox. Does that make a difference?

Also, keep in mind that all of this worked fine when it was plugged in with the wireless dongle and when it was plugged in with ethernet but bypassing the router.
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tkyoshi wrote: Also try disabling IPV6 (Just uncheck it in network properties) on your Ethernet card
I owe you dude (or Ms. dude) because that was the answer. I knew about this, but hadn't tried it. I use a home network and thought I needed IPV6 for that. But after you posted your comment, I read about it again further and discovered I only need it for the home group thingie, not the network. And we never use the home group. But then I thought "well, how could this be it anyway? Because it worked properly when I plugged in the ethernet cable directly from the wall and if IPV6 is in the router then it's in that ethernet cable." But then I thought "what if the signal from the wall disperses differently than it does via the router somehow and it's all jumbled or something and it's not as clear to the network card what's IPV6 and IPV4 so it let it through?" Then I thought "what the hell?" and tried it, unticked the box and Windows Update worked!!!

So thanks so much. Although the network card should be able toggle between both protocols I'm thinking because it does with the other network cards on our network. So maybe the card's malfunctioning or something? I don't know. I'm going to ask Refurb if they'll replace the card because if I need to use both protocols I won't be able to do that. I'm just lucky I don't use the home group. :-) Thanks again.
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TheHans wrote: I owe you dude (or Ms. dude) because that was the answer. I knew about this, but hadn't tried it. I use a home network and thought I needed IPV6 for that. But after you posted your comment, I read about it again further and discovered I only need it for the home group thingie, not the network. And we never use the home group. But then I thought "well, how could this be it anyway? Because it worked properly when I plugged in the ethernet cable directly from the wall and if IPV6 is in the router then it's in that ethernet cable." But then I thought "what if the signal from the wall disperses differently than it does via the router somehow and it's all jumbled or something and it's not as clear to the network card what's IPV6 and IPV4 so it let it through?" Then I thought "what the hell?" and tried it, unticked the box and Windows Update worked!!!

So thanks so much. Although the network card should be able toggle between both protocols I'm thinking because it does with the other network cards on our network. So maybe the card's malfunctioning or something? I don't know. I'm going to ask Refurb if they'll replace the card because if I need to use both protocols I won't be able to do that. I'm just lucky I don't use the home group. :-) Thanks again.
Awesome! Currently IPv6 isn't really mainstream yet, but Telus is in the process of rolling out IPv6 for subscribers. Sometimes this causes issues as not everything is fully IPv6 compliant yet. Basically if you browse a site that has a IPv6 Address (i.e. Amazon, Microsoft, etc...) it resolves ok but then the packets get lost on it's way to the server causing your issue (if you do a trace, it will say destination host unreachable or something similar). But at least we narrowed down your issue!

One thing you can try is disabling Large Send Offload for IPv6 in your NIC Driver, turn IPv6 back on and see if it solves the issue. I'd be curious if this helps as I've heard of this solving issues for others. It's unlikely the NIC is malfunctioning (It's just that IPv6 is still not mainstream/have all the kinks worked out) however if it makes you sleep better at night and you have an exchange policy by all means go ahead but I would expect that the replacement unit theoretically would behave the same way.

To your home network, if you don't use HomeGroup then no you don't need IPv6, almost everything still runs off IPv4 so functionality isn't impacted.
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tkyoshi wrote: One thing you can try is disabling Large Send Offload for IPv6 in your NIC Driver, turn IPv6 back on and see if it solves the issue. I'd be curious if this helps as I've heard of this solving issues for others. It's unlikely the NIC is malfunctioning (It's just that IPv6 is still not mainstream/have all the kinks worked out) however if it makes you sleep better at night and you have an exchange policy by all means go ahead but I would expect that the replacement unit theoretically would behave the same way.
I will try what you suggested. But what is the purpose of the Large Send Offload and so what would be the potential ramifications of disabling it? Also, why do you think a replacement would work the same when all the other computers on our home network have no issues of this type one way or the other?

If they do exchange it, I realized it can't be the same one, as this current network adapter is on-board. So they'd have to send me a dedicated network card which (obviously) wouldn't be the same one.
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TheHans wrote: I will try what you suggested. But what is the purpose of the Large Send Offload and so what would be the potential ramifications of disabling it? Also, why do you think a replacement would work the same when all the other computers on our home network have no issues of this type one way or the other?

If they do exchange it, I realized it can't be the same one, as this current network adapter is on-board. So they'd have to send me a dedicated network card which (obviously) wouldn't be the same one.
Hello,

Oh I thought you were going to ask for a swap of the entire computer which would mean the same NIC. That's why I meant it was unlikely to fix the issue, basically some NIC drivers have bugs in them that can also cause this issue. Some of the newer Intel Cards exhibit the same issue if Large Send Offload is turned on for IPv6 (IPv4 works fine).

Large Send Offload just lets the NIC handle everything, technically it helps reduce CPU Usage during sustained high loads but since modern CPUs are powerful enough you're unlikely to notice any difference. If you had a really low power system like an old Intel Atom then there would be a difference but not for a Core i5.
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TheHans wrote: this current network adapter is on-board. So they'd have to send me a dedicated network card which (obviously) wouldn't be the same one.
A separate network card can be had for <$20, I'm not sure if it is worth the hassle to try to get one from the refurbisher.
IIRC a number of my Thinkcentres over the years have used intel for networking. Have you checked for updates from intel?
Lastly, one of my thinkcentres was also acting up when I upgraded my 10/100 switch to a gigabit. It turned out to be the cable, have you checked your cabling?
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It seems to be a driver issue for IPv6, I found this thread for you maybe you can also read through, but it seems Intel 82579LM (I'm guessing you might have this one? I217 came out w/ Haswell Chipsets), I217's are some of the affected cards. I would expect eventually once IPv6 becomes more mainstream, it won't be an issue. Part the theme are dual stacked websites (IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity available).

Give it a shot, hopefully it fixes it for you and confirms it's just a driver issue. You can safely leave Offloading disabled (you won't notice any difference), or get another non-affected NIC. Now if Intel would only fix their RST drivers....... :P

http://www.lalandestrategies.com/ipv6/i ... ps-emails/
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r302382 ... k~start=30
Since rolling out dual-stack IPV6 to our consumer Internet customers, we've had a couple of customer incidents with very slow IPV6 TCP performance to dual-stacked websites (facebook, Wikipedia.org, ...). The problems only occurs with Windows 7/8/10 PCs connected via Ethernet NICs. Disabling IPV6 TCP checksum offloading will resolve the performance issues in some cases, but not in all cases. We have tried updating the Windows NIC driver to the latest version, but that didn't help. I'm wondering if anybody else has seen this issue with Windows PCs.

=================================
Clinton Work
TELUS | Network Operations & Support

Two suspect NICs at this point:
- Intel® 82579LM found in some HP laptops. Disabling the IPV6 TCP checksum offloading resolves the problem.
- Realtek RTL8111E - The problem is inconsistent
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/n ... w_threaded
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ROYinTO wrote: A separate network card can be had for <$20, I'm not sure if it is worth the hassle to try to get one from the refurbisher.
IIRC a number of my Thinkcentres over the years have used intel for networking. Have you checked for updates from intel?
Lastly, one of my thinkcentres was also acting up when I upgraded my 10/100 switch to a gigabit. It turned out to be the cable, have you checked your cabling?
Thanks for your suggestions. The cabling appears to be fine. We even replaced the Ethernet cable when the tech brought the new router and there was no change. We got those updates from Intel when we tried (at some point) uninstalling and re-installing both the adapter and the drivers as a solution. And this update was a good idea, as the driver software was quite different than what we had in the first place. But there was no change. Regarding the network card, I asked the refurbisher and I'm waiting to hear back. Once I do, I'll decide how to move forward, but certainly returning the whole computer is not an option as we really like it and it was a good deal. They're out of stock anyway (probably the RFD effect haha). And even if they weren't, based on what Tkyoshi says it looks like there would be no difference anyway. Although it's surprising that no one else on RFD has reported this issue.
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tkyoshi wrote: It seems to be a driver issue for IPv6, I found this thread for you maybe you can also read through, but it seems Intel 82579LM (I'm guessing you might have this one? I217 came out w/ Haswell Chipsets), I217's are some of the affected cards. I would expect eventually once IPv6 becomes more mainstream, it won't be an issue. Part the theme are dual stacked websites (IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity available).

Give it a shot, hopefully it fixes it for you and confirms it's just a driver issue. You can safely leave Offloading disabled (you won't notice any difference), or get another non-affected NIC. Now if Intel would only fix their RST drivers....... :P
Thanks again for your help. We re-enabled (if that's a word) the V6 protocol and first tried disabling the V6 Large Send Offload, but that didn't work. However, we then tried disabling TCP checksum offloading as per one of the links you sent and that worked. But what is "TCP checksum offloading"? I have no idea haha.

The links you sent were very interesting. And I was impressed that you knew that the desktop has the Intel 82579LM when I never even told you. You've also clarified something I wondered about, which is if it's a problem with the adapter itself. And since that seems to be the case, exchanging the desktop is off the table, although they're out of stock anyway and I wouldn't really see the point if the problem can be corrected with this Rube Goldberg method. If Reburb doesn't want to give us a dedicated network card for whatever reason -- because let's face it, they probably have some lying around -- we'll either just leave well enough alone or buy one on our own, as Royinto also suggested.
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TheHans wrote: Thanks again for your help. We re-enabled (if that's a word) the V6 protocol and first tried disabling the V6 Large Send Offload, but that didn't work. However, we then tried disabling TCP checksum offloading as per one of the links you sent and that worked. But what is "TCP checksum offloading"? I have no idea haha.

The links you sent were very interesting. And I was impressed that you knew that the desktop has the Intel 82579LM when I never even told you. You've also clarified something I wondered about, which is if it's a problem with the adapter itself. And since that seems to be the case, exchanging the desktop is off the table, although they're out of stock anyway and I wouldn't really see the point if the problem can be corrected with this Rube Goldberg method. If Reburb doesn't want to give us a dedicated network card for whatever reason -- because let's face it, they probably have some lying around -- we'll either just leave well enough alone or buy one on our own, as Royinto also suggested.
Hello!

Great again to hear it worked for you. It's basically similar principle to Large Send Offload, it tries to get the NIC to do everything in hardware. With is off it's handed off to the CPU which is plenty powerful so you won't notice any difference. In addition you aren't really using IPv6 anyway for day to day traffic.

In extreme scenarios sure there may be a slight difference with it on, but for what you and I do it will never be apparent in day to day use (we're talking about a small difference if you say pump through like 5-10 Gigabits of data at once).

If it worries you, then yes getting another NIC with a non affected chipset/driver combo should fix the issue for you. Unfortunately the 82579LM NIC is now considered a mature product, so until IPv6 becomes mainstream I doubt Intel will really do anything about it in the mean time. They stopped regularly releasing new drivers for it quite a while back. Heck they already stopped writing drivers for the I340 which is a server grade NIC, your only option for that is the In-Box drivers for Win 8.1/Server 2012 R2 and Up.

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