Monday, December 18, 2006

Messenger error 81000306

This error drove me nuts! It cost me not hours but days of my time to remedy, and it's all Microsofts fault!

Firstly, my config:
3 computers networked with a basic 8 port hub/switch, sharing a dial-up connection on the main machine, all XP Pro SP2. Main machine has Marvel on-board LAN. Reinstalled XP on the lot.

Next, the problem.
Messenger Live would not work on the networked machines, well, it did on very rare occasions after I had been messing around a bit, but mostly Error 81000306 just came up. Neither did the Messenger that installs with windows. Strangely, my laptop with Messenger 7 worked well whenever I pluged it in.
I also noted that many websites would not load on the networked machines, such as the windows update website.

Now, something funny is going on....
I noticed that after a fresh install of XP on the main machine, everything worked! But only for a while, then the same damn thing started happening again! What had I just done to my fresh install of XP to cause this problem again? Only windows update, and it can't be that...

Then, "Oh yes it can...."
It had to have something to do with the network, and one of the "optional" updates under "Hardware" I had chosen was for the on-board LAN on the main machine, as shown below:

Marvell Marvell Yukon 88E8001/8003/8010 PCI Gigabit Ethernet Controller

Marvell Semiconductor - Networking - Marvell Yukon 88E8001/8003/8010 PCI Gigabit Ethernet Controller


The Solution
I tried to use "Roll back driver" in device manager, but this did not work, so I uninstalled it instead, and reinstalled it using the original LAN drivers that came with the mainboard.
Everything now works 100%, and has been stable for 3 days.

Wish I could send Microsuck the bill for my time.....

2 comments:

Quaddy said...

We got the 81000306 error again after a few weeks, the solution was the same: use device manager to "uninstall" the Marvel Yukon LAN device, reboot and install the old drivers. Everything is fine and stable once again.
I'm not sure how it happened, but perhaps windows update updated the driver again. I have automatic updates turned off at this point.

Unknown said...

I have this problem on dozens of computers, none of them with your driver. So there should be multiple reasons and solutions for this problem.

Omar