Windows XP Not Recognizing Crossover Cable

Factual Questions
1

I plugged a crossovercable into the correct port on my XP machine, yet XP claims it’s not plugged in. Why is it telling me this?

2

Does the NIC indicate a link? (solid green light, usually) If there’s no link, you’ve either got a bad or incorrect kind of cable. It’s a hardware issue and Windows has nothing to do with it.

3

WHere’s the light located? Near the cross over port? I don’t see anything lit…

4

Are you sure it’s actually a crossover cable? If you look at one end of the cable, the colors on the wires are in a particular order - on the other end they should be reversed. No telling how many times I’d have to troubleshoot something like this only to find out it was a standard CAT5 cable and not a crossover one.

And the link light is usually somewhere on the backplane (for a standalone NIC) or just above the plug (on a motherboard with an integrated NIC). If you’re not getting a link light, the cable is probbaly the wrong type or is bad.

5

Ah shit, I think you’re right about it being a wrong cable. Damn, I don’t know how I made that mistake. thanks.

6

Not reversed. That would be a rollover cable. On a crossover cable, pin 1 on one end goes to pin 3 on the other end and pin 2 goes to pin 6. The other pins stay the same.

The correct color coding is like this:

Straight through end:
White/Orange, Orange, White/Green, Blue, White/Blue, Green, White/Brown, Brown

Crossover end:
White/Green, Green, White/Orange, Blue, White/Blue, Orange, White/Brown, Brown

7

Mine had purple, red, green I think and one other. What cable do I have?

8

Purple, red and green?

Holy crap! Whatever you do, don’t touch that cable. Please. Think of the children.

9
      • Some NIC’s do not allow the use of crossover cables. I do not know why this is, but I have a couple of Linksys cards (model #LNE100TX, version 4) that refused to work with one, and when I was in networking casses the instructor also noted that some cards would not work with them either. If you have any cards that fail to work with a crossover cable, then you may need to get regular cables and a hub.
        ~