• Ethernet recognition busted
    4 replies, posted
Sit tight, I got a little story here. There was a pretty wild lightning storm last night that blew up a transformer just adjacent to the yard, knocking power out with a rattling bang. My PC was on at the time, as well as the modem/router. It wreaked emotional havoc as I wasn't able to see whether it fucked up my electronics too for about half a day. Fair warning, there's a running phenomena in this wall of text that I swear I see things but can't otherwise be certain I did because of distress. And with that, I will say I could have sworn I saw blue crackling/sparks in my modem/router and heard it when things went dark. Unplugged my stuff for the rest of the night regardless. Come many hours later when the transformer got repaired, I plugged it all back up and half-assed a quick inspection through the top fan port of my tower to see if anything lit up. Swear I saw a green light on the ethernet port, but never actually got a concrete visual since I was hasty in booting the whole thing up to see if it worked. The important thing is that it did boot fine, thank fuck. What really surprised me was that my modem/router booted just fine too. I swore I saw it get fried. Anyway, I chose the option to start Windows normally, things looked fine, etc etc... but now the ethernet port is apparently bust. No light on it either. Wifi and internet is OK on phone. Checked drivers, and it won't show up in device manager -- the kicker is, upon trying to reinstall it, the wizard recognizes driver is already installed and asks to install, repair, or delete drivers. Tried 'repair' first, and after the attempt, it told me [quote]The Realtek Network Controller was not found. If deep sleep mode is enabled Please plug the cable[/quote]. So I tried deleting, then freshly installing. Same error. Then, I tried to go to a restore point to a few days ago, and the provided noted changes were actually pretty specific on the fact that the driver 'Realtek PCIe FE Family Controller' (the ethernet driver) would be reverted to what looked like a different version. Tried this, but no dice. Tried using the USB ports on the same 'box' the ethernet port is on. They work fine. In summation: upon booting Windows normally, it looks like ethernet is jacked up. That, or the storm zapped my ethernet and I falsely saw a green port light. Tried resetting bios to default (thru menu), checked ethernet was enabled Tried reinstalling drivers Tried rebooting modem/router (no hard reset yet though since it seems to be working for all else) Tried different ports on the router Haven't tried new cat6 patch cable (not readily available...) Haven't tried ethernet adapter (would need to buy one) Haven't tried swapping mobos (cause that requires a much more thorough workload...) Mobo is MSI P67A-C45, if that's relevant. Win7 64bit. It just seems like the issue is with the port hardware, but I can't come to terms since I was certain I saw it light up. That error message I get is foreign to me, and the appearance of the adapter driver in the device manager is contingent on whether the ethernet cable is recognized iirc. Would an ethernet adapter be a viable replacement? Sure, if I knew there was physical damage to the mobo I would seek extensive hardware replacement, but the problem is I can't tell if it was physical damage. Safe to say I will be backing stuff up, regardless... What do yall say?
adapter will show as "Ethernet cable unplugged" if it's unplugged, if the adapter itself is non-functional that will report as "adapter disconnected" you're not going to see a link light come on until the PC has started up most likely it's dead
The ethernet port is integrated on the mobo; I havent actually gotten to try an adapter. PC is on and functional, currently using a usb wifi adapter to connect to internet. Troubleshooting the issue on Windows' super-handy troubleshooter, it just tells me a driver isn't present.
the onboard ethernet is dead
Yep, sounds like it. I'd make sure by testing another device with the same ethernet cable and port. An Intel ethernet PCIe adapter off eBay is about as good as you can get for the money, one with a visible chip/heatsink on it. Had some crazy storms here too last night, didn't have power until some time after midnight.
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