Invalid MAC Address for SiS 900-Based NIC

When I installed a new firewall at a site, the domain controller could not ping the firewall nor access the Internet through the firewall, yet it could ping and access all other systems on the LAN. The problem was due to the domain controller using a SiS 900-based PCI Fast Ethernet network adapter, which had a physical, aka MAC, address of all zeroes. When I assigned a non-zero address to the adapter, the problem disappeared.

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No Display on Monitor

One of my wife's aunts was not getting any display on her monitor. I replaced the AGP video adapter in her system with another AGP adapter, but still nothing would appear on the monitor when the system was booted. I tried a PCI video adapter instead, but the results were the same. The original AGP adapter from her system worked in another system, so it appears the problem is a fried motherboard; she said the problem happened after a storm, though the system was plugged into an UPS. The motherboard in the system is an EliteGroup Computer Systems (ECS) K7S5A motherboard.

For anyone having video display problems, there is a flowchart, Troubleshooting a Video Adapter and Computer Monitor by Morris Rosenthal that lists steps you can take to isolate the problem.

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