pix 515E

I cannot see anything either, i was also thinking about a duplex issue. If you look at the interface to ensure that everything is showing up and to see if there are any errors. If there are interface errors is suggestions a speed/duplex missmatch. I like the idea of plugging a switch in and setting the duplex to auto.

If you can post the interface stats that would be handy

Cheers

This is a bit quirky. About 20% fo the time this issue comes up. You follow all the correct steps for upgrading the software and for some reason the connection to the tftp server doesn't go. I can give you this reply because I just finished working on upgrading 5 pix515e firewalls and only one of them gave me this problem.
upgrading from 6.3(5) to 7.0(4). Started from monitor> that went fine.
But after the reboot when your image is only in ram and you need to set up an interface to copy the image for the second time that is when this problem comes up.
Laptop ip 192.168.1.10 255.255.255.0
PIX515e ip 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0

Tried to ping tftp (laptop) from pix - no worky
Tried to ping PIX interface from PIX - no worky with error "no route to host"
sho route on pix came up empty
I then configured the interface name for ethernet0 as "outside"
magically the route table was populated with the required route and everything worked.

I must further submit that this was the a failover only licensed PIX and that it was connected to an unrestricted PIX at the time.

Marrken.

how about interface hardware problem, like maybe the NIC on the laptop is damaged or the interface on the PIX is damaged, you did a no shut on the PIX interface and your laptop NIC is enabled right;-)

Please try to Ping from your laptop and check the ping messages thrown to you, like "hardware failure", "request timed out" things like that.