[supernature]

I have a strange issue. My Mac Mini ethernet keeps dropping after several hours. The network preference panel just states that there is no device plugged into the port despite that the router gets solid lights.

Anyway, the strange part is that I can always get it to work again after I delete the entire system configuration preference folder and restart the computer. If I just restart without deleting them, it doesn't work. I thought it might have been the new router I bought, but when I plug directly into my macbook ethernet, it doesn't pick that up either.

I've already tried disabling the ethernet and re-enabling it. I've set up new locations as well. The only thing that worked so far was deleting the entire system configuration folder in the preference folder of the root library.

Has anyone else run into the issue? I've had this issue before snow leopard as well.

[ibook_steve]

Have you tried testing with a different user account? Something is messed up with your accounts preferences and keeps getting messed up. See if it happens with another user account.

Steve

[besson3c]

When this happens run an "ifconfig" in your terminal and see if your network interface is listed there with your correct IP. If it is not listed there then the interface has been destroyed. If the wrong IP is in there let us know what the IP reads.

[ghporter]

There are a number of issues that could cause this problem, two of which Steve and besson3c have mentioned. You don't say what router you have-this could be a very large contributor to the problem. Some consumer routers are, shall we say "less than robust" and they stop properly routing traffic at some point or other. So first, what router do you have (make, model and if you know, how current its firmware is)? And have you tried just restarting your router instead of trashing all your preferences and restarting the computer?