2 PCI Lan cards on a same system

I have a system which has 2 LAN cards (PCI) (Both are the same model, same manufacturer DLink 538TX 10/100 Mbps) and is running Windows 2000 Adv Server as the operating system.

The basic scenario is that the system is connected to the local LAN (192.168.x.x) through one Lan card and to the internet (Public.IP) via the other.

The problem that i face is, the system takes a long long time to boot up and even after that i am somehow not able to access the internet. When i disable the LAN connection, i am able to access the internet and vice versa.

Someone told me that its the Windows 2000 limitation that cannot handle 2 PCI Lan cards on the same system.

So i wanted to know if this is truely the case. If not, then should i get one lan card may be of another manufacturer, or would the ones that i have work ?

Can someone please help me. I need to find a solution to this problem soon.

Thanks in advance.

total bull****.

maybe it is a driver problem, your driver MIGHT not be able to address two same cards. but i doubt.
i guess you assigned IPs from the same subnet.
can you give some more detailed infos about your setup? (IPs, netmasks, a short description of your network layout and why you have two NICs)

Thanks M.Hirsch for your reply.

Here are more specific details-

LAN IP - 192.168.1.1/255.255.255.0
Public IP - 20x.x.x.x/255.255.255.25x
Both Lan Cards - D-Link 538TX 10/100 Mbps
O/S - Windows 2000 SP2 Adv Server

I have a small network of 6 pc's, and basically this system is used as a server so that is the reason why i have 1 Lan card for the local lan and the other that is connected to the internet. I use a proxy server to share the internet access.

I hope i provided the much needed information. Looking forward to some help that could help me solve this problem.

Thanks.

(on my machine at work, including the dial-ups and virtual NICs from VMWare, i have about 8 NICs, up to 4 are active at the same time)

looks ok so far. did you setup any gateways and dns servers (i mean "configure the clients / the server to use a specific one")?

and did you disable DHCP (automatic IP assignment) for your servers´ NIC to the internal network? DHCP is quite often the reason for long boot up times.

Yes i did setup gateways & DNS for both the NIC's.

NIC connected to the LAN:

Gateway : 192.168.1.1
Primary DNS : 192.168.1.1

NIC connected to the ISP:

Gateway : 20x.x.x.x (Router connected to the ISP)
Primary DNS : 20x.y.y.y
Secondary DNS : 20x.z.z.z

As regards to the DHCP, yes its disabled. I am not using DHCP for my internal network. All the client machines have static Lan IP's.

I hope i answered the questions. So now what do you think would be the problem ?

Thanks for your reply.

you have setup two nameservers, i think this is the problem.

the first one (in the registry) will be asked, no matter if it knows the answer. if it does not, your machine will think that this domain does not exists. the second nameserver will only be asked if the first one is not available which happens when you disable this NIC.
to confirm this, try to ping an external IP (eg. google.com = 216.239.51.100) when your LAN is enabled. It would go through... But DNS doesn´t work.

then you need to setup the internal dns server to be able to access the ´net too and ask the root nameservers if it does not know the answer. then this will become your only nameserver.

the problem i see: during boot-up of win2k, there is no routing service available yet. but it seems like it wants to query a nameserver, this is why it takes so long.

imho you need to redesign your network, i suggest running the internal net´s nameserver on the win2k machine or connecting the internal nameserver also to your external router.

maybe you could solve this too by finding out which address is being queried on boot-up (run a network sniffer on the lan) and put this host/ip in your "hosts" file.

[edit]
i´ve been told recently that what i said about secondary nameserver is wrong. it´s the OS´s choice to randomly or use following whatever algorithm to choose any of the two.
[/edit]

Heh, windows servers crack me up.

Anyway.

Set up every computer including the secondary nic of the server the same as the nic going to the internet

yup

x-cept not the same IP and gateway.

That way they use the secondary nic as a gateway to your server to access the IP of the name server the ISP provides. I don't see why you don't just use ICS and remove its extranious jibber jabber. It's winders afterall. Or a wan router, them work nice and look fancy with the flashy lights on your desk. I got me the new neat looking Netgear one, but I keep it in a closet with all the wiring for the house so I don't get to see it