X870 Pro RS - Realtek 2.5Gbe Gaming Network Drops

I wanted to share my solution for a recent (January 2025) problem on Windows 11.

TL;DR: Don't use the Realtek drivers. If you have installed them, use the Realtek installer to remove/uninstall the drivers and let Win 11 use its default driver version. Driver Provider of Microsoft, Date of 2017-08-10, Version 1.0.0.14. This is what worked for me.

Hardware
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OS:          Windows 11
Motherboard: X870 Pro RS (non-wifi)
CPU:        Ryzen 7 9700X
Ram:        TeamGroup TCreate 4x16GB
Storage:     SN850X 2TB, Samsung 990 EVO 2TB
GPU:        Gigabyte 4080 Super Windforce V2
Networking: Realtek Gaming 2.5Gbe Family Controller -> 2.5G TP Link switch


Issue/Symptoms:
At the start without driver updates, the network card was working perfectly fine, fast as expected no issues at all.

At a later time when I added an extra PCIe Wifi/BT card (MSI Herald BE Wifi 7 Max) but stuck to the wired connection, and some point after that we started experiencing the networking drops. I figured it was something with the drivers for the Wifi card. Pulled the networking card, and the issue kept happening.

Without any heavy "load" I could keep a

ping -t 19.168.2.1

running with no issues most of the time. However once I started streaming Youtube, Streaming plex, trying Speedtest, fast.com tests or a hefty download the network would just drop, loose connection to even the gateway and couldn't get a DHCP connection.

Checking the networking port lights on both ends, and they were still lit up. Nothing in the Event logs indicates that the network plug was disconnected or reconnected, just no more connection. Replaced the networking cable, the switches in the path, and issue still happened on the wired connection.


Solution: (YMMV - Your Mileage May Vary)
Ultimately the problem came down to the Realtek drivers. At some point the drivers got updated to the official Realtek ones. Since there is so many versions tied to different motherboard manufacturers some older drivers work, and these 'new ones' from Realtek and ASROCK definitely do not work for me. Using the realtek Installer, I uninstalled the drivers and let windows use its default ones. I then disabled Driver updates from Windows 11 via registry settings, hoping it won't update the drivers anymore.