Networking Issues? Try this!

Summary for OS X 10.4

• Open Network Preference Pane
• Select "Network Port Configuration" from the "Show:" drop-down
• Delete any "Ethernet Adaptor" that is grayed out
• Reboot

I just upgraded to 3.0 build 4128. I have a MacBook Pro Core2Duo and I'm using Windows XP SP2 on a BootCamp partition with shared networking. When I booted up for the first time, I was having all kinds of networking issues; no connection, limited connectivity, etc. I switched to bridged networking and I could get it to work for a little while, but there were still some odd quirks.

To investigate, I went into the network preference pane to see if there was a problem. Sure enough, there was. Ethernet Adapter (en2) and Ethernet Adapter (en3) are virtual adapters for the shared and local networking features in Parallels. Neither of them were working so I took a look at the Network Port Configurations page. There were 4 Ethernet Adapters and two of them were grayed out.

Ethernet Adapter (en2)
Ethernet Adapter (en3)
Ethernet Adapter (en2)
Ethernet Adapter (en3)

I deleted the two that were grayed out and rebooted the Mac. Everything works! Shared networking, host-only networking and bridged networking. Hope this helps.

 

There have been a number of success stories posted here in recent days covering a variety of issues. That's pretty cool. Seems like there should be a way to highlight them such that it gets back to Parallels engineering. Unfortunately the How-to forum was culled in the recent overhaul and it turned more into a "Tell me how" rather than a "Here's How" venue.