Well, yesterday I hooked up a brand new Dell Optiplex 755 back in the shipping/receiving warehouse. Since we don't have images (yet) I began my usual setup for office and some of our corporate applications. Keep in mind everything is located on our file server. Now the first thing I tried to install was Office, but I just couldn't do it. For some reason every time I tried, the workstation would get disconnected. I said "Hmm, that's kind of funny". I tried over five times to install the damn thing. The workstation would keep a constant network connection until the very second I would try to install office.
Next thing you know, the guy sharing the same office says he got disconnected too... not too long after one of the guys up a little further by packaging says he got disconnected as well. Now, I thought it was pretty ironic all these connectivity issues happened immediately after hooking up a new workstation, but... I was 99% positive it was a cable issue somewhere in the ceiling. I was thinking, either there was a dangling cable somewhere getting tugged on or it was a bandwith issue since these three individuals might not be tapping on the fiber considering its a long run from the front to the back of the building for cat5. So I called up one of the guys than ran the wires and he told me they are in fact hooked up to a fiber switch. At this point I'm completely stumped.
I figured I'll wait a little while to see if things calm down. I come back after lunch and no complaints, everyone claims they're running smoothly again. I say ok... I might as well try to install Office again. Guess what happens immediately when I try to install it? The desktop gets disconnected and the other 2 get disconnected as well. Now I've found the root of the problem. Any time I try to start ANY kind of file transfer on this new workstation the other people hooked up to the same fiber switch are getting disconnected. MEANWHILE, doing a file transfer on either of the other two workstations run fine. Now I'm completely confused, I never seen anything like this.
Anyways... About 3 hours later I had an idea that maybe too much bandwidth was being pushed to the workstation, considering it did come packed with a gigabit network adapter. Not that I ever seen any issues related to gigabit devices but it seemed kind of fishy. I figured I'd update the drivers and lower the link speed from Auto Detect to 10, since we only have a 7mb connection. I reboot the computer and try to install Office again... low and behold the transfer went through completely and no one else got disconnected.
What's the strangest issue you ever had? Whether it be in a corporate environment or your own computer.
