hey guys i have a little problem, first let me say that i have a k7s5a motherboard, radeon 9000, two hd 1:40gb 1:160gb 4 gigafast 10/100 nic's. Windows will detect the onboard ethernet port on the motherboard, and will detect one of the pci nic's but if i put 2 pci cards in there it wont recognize the second one. I'm wanting to make the computer a server for internet and for files, but i want to have 100 mbps going to up to 4 computers connected up to it. that means 4 nic's right? first of all with 2 nic's if i plug in the internet and my crossover cable to my laptop at the same time the computer freezes when you try to get on the internet/browse the network. when you reboot from the refreeze windows says that it has lost the bootloader which i found out means that the bios has lost the information for the hard drives.... restart again.... autosearch for hdd in bios setup, save, and windows works, but you can only have 1 nic plugged up. when i have the internet plugged in alone it works fine. when i unplug the internet and try the crossover connection to my laptop it works. but when i plus in both at once the freakin thing locks up. second problem. I want to have 4 nic's in the computer but it wont detect 2 pci cards.... when i put another pci card in the computer and boot i can see the onboard pci and the first pci card that i put in, but the add hardware wizard cannot find the new card to save its life. the cards are plug and play so i should be able to put all 4 in there, install the drivers and be good to go right?

You need a switch! - www.netgear.com

When you put two NIC's in the same machine you sometimes enter Networking Hell. I simply mean that things that are supposed to work on a network no longer work. You have to search for answers to the most simple problems then only to be faced with more problems which you should not have. Take the advice above and route things thru a switch or router if you want internet access as well. Less headaches and you will get to keep your hair for a while longer.

Your intentions are good, but you should really look into using linux for this job. If you want to create a router or firewall, there are linux distro's to do this, such as ipcop and smoothwall. And they are not hard to set up - smoothwall has a nice, user friendly web interface. But, if you are like me, you are dedicated to doing it your way. Are you running a firewall? Many problems can be from that, McAfee creates resource conflicts until it is re-installed. Also, maybe one of the cards got a taste of static electricity during installation? Did you try a different card? Did you check the bios? Otherwise, a router or switch will cost you next to nothing.