1. It's not normal. Maybe it's been a long time since you used anything other than Lunix. Unless the host server is offline or has a flaky connection, network drives should stay connected.
Perhaps you should review how NetBIOS works. It is an on-demand system, not a persistent connection.
I am currently running Windows Vista, Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows 7 Enterprise, Windows 8 Pro, Windows 8 Enterprise, 2 instances of Windows Server 2008 R2, and 4 instances of Windows Server 2012. My host system is Windows 8 Pro using Client Hyper-V. My virtual network is hosted off of the 82579V NIC. I have Fedora 17 installed as well, but it is currently unusable until I fix the Hyper-V drivers that Microsoft wrote. I plan to install it on another box this weekend.
2. "Somewhat expected"? What are you, an Intel apologist? Then explain why they can be separately disabled in BIOS? It's a bug by any reasonable standard.
Indeed it is a bug. I just stated that it was somewhat expected due to the device specifications.
3. I've had four total DZ77GA motherboards and EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM DOES THE SAME THING. I finally gave up and stopped using the 82574L, I bought an external NIC by another company and my lockups mysteriously went away. The easiest way to repro the issue is due a large file transfer (say 100GB) over the 82574L--the lockup will happen very quickly. Does not happen using the other NIC or an external NIC using the same network equipment.
That leaves the cable and the other NIC port to test. There is some level of fault tolerance in NICs. Some are better than others at dealing with it. I have observed the symptoms you have observed before, but never with the DZ77GA-70K. Besides the rare glitch that people have described in this thread, I have not had any problems with the 82574L NIC.
If you work for Intel in any capacity you should be fired for incompetence. Either way you should never post on these forums again. All you are doing is misinforming users and trying to sweep Intel's failures under the rug. You obviously have no experience with the DZ77GA, which since it is explicitly named in the thread title means you should never have had the balls to attempt to inform anyone of what was "really" happening.
I have never worked for Intel. I responded based on my experience and tests with the motherboard and the 17 years of software development experience from Windows 3.11 through Windows 8, as well as with MS-DOS, PC-DOS, OS/2, and Linux. I also understand what the topic of this thread is about; I am affected and have been back and forth with Intel trying to resolve it. One of the three issues you are ranting about is a Windows issue. The second is a legitimate BIOS issue, though not something that causes the NIC to fail repeatedly. The third is doubtfully a problem with four different batches of the DZ77GA-70K motherboard. Based on my experience doing home ethernet installations, the issue is more likely a problem with the cable or the port on the opposite end.
Yes, the Intel driver and hardware glitch. That is an Intel issue.
Yes, the driver becomes unstable when errors occur. That is an Intel issue.
Disabling of the 82574L driver, without running the hardware diagnostic, causes a driver stack issue in Windows 8 that prevents Windows 8 from using other NICs or even shutting down the NT kernel, but that is a Microsoft issue for which I have an open Microsoft case.
I am not misinforming anyone. I am trying to provide some information that helps people recover from the issue while trying to find out more information about the individual cases.
Please do the community a favor and stop being pretentious and demeaning.