SDB:Realtek 8169 driver problem

From openSUSE

Version: 9.1-

Situation

You are running a Realtek 8168, 8169, 8101 or 8111 chipset based card but the network doesn't work, but the driver reports that the interface is up and running. You are running dual boot Windows and Linux on your machine.

Reason

The Realtek Windows driver disables the NIC at Windows shutdown time. The current linux r8169 driver does not know how to turn on the NIC from this disabled state, therefor the device will not respond, even if the driver loads and reports that the device is up.

Workaround

Here are two workarounds for this issue:

1. You power down the machine completely and unplug the power supply for a few seconds (about 10 will do). This seems to reset the card and the Linux driver work until you boot Windows again.

2. You enable "Wake-on-lan after shutdown." in the Windows device manager. This prevents the Windows driver to disable the card.

References

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_RTL8168