Problems with Realtek RTL8111B NIC

On my desktop PC I have a Realtek RTL8111B Gigabit Ethernet NIC. W7 installed fine, and has been running a few days OK. However, for some reason, today it is only connecting to my network at 10Mbps, rather than its usual 100Mbps (I can't achieve 1000Mbps due to the limitations of my Netgear DG834GT router)

I suspect this is an issue with the driver, and, upon looking in Device Manager, I have determined the driver version currently being used is 7.1.820.2008. However, when I look at the ASRock website (my NIC is built into my ASRock motherboard) the most recent driver (Vista) is 6.186.1103.2006. Furthermore, if I go to the Realtek website, the most recent driver (Vista) is 6.213.0120.

I have tried to unistall the 7.1.820.2008 driver, in order to install one of the other drivers. However, I cannot get to the stage of installing one of these drivers, as the 7.1.820.2008 driver is automatically installed whenever the system is scanned for new hardware.

So...2 questions...

1) Which driver should I be using? Is the 7.1.820.2008 driver likely to be some kind of driver written recently for W7? Or should I be using the most up-to-date Vista driver I can find?

2) How do I attempt to install another (older) driver, instead of allowing the system to automatically install the newer driver?

I see your problem. I also hate having sound. One thing you can do is go to Control Panel>System and Security>Windows Update>Change Settings>Change the drop down menu to say "Download updates, but let me choose whether to install them". That should somewhat solve your problem.

Thanks for the reply. However, this doesn't solve my problem one bit. The updated driver has already been installed to my system, and is being picked up by the Device Manager driver installer. Therefore, disabling the install of any future updates won't help me.

I have now tried uplugging the network cable from my router, uninstalling the driver, rebooting, installing the older driver, then plugging in my network cable...however, this still doesn't solve the problem either.

I have also tried manually adjusting the speed of the NIC through the Advanced tab under Device Manager, but even when I specify either 100Mbps Full Duplex or 100Mbps Half Duplex, it still connects at 10Mbps!

Any other ideas?

UPDATE - everything now working OK. I powered off the router, restarted W7, then powered the router back on, and everything was OK. Weird!