I have a 2 year old desktop which is connected to the router with a cat5 cable using an onboard nic (Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller). It has a static ip. Suddenly tonight it has decided it can’t connect to the router. The green light on the RJ45 connector is illuminated but nothing happens. The same cable and port on the router work fine on a laptop. Struggling to know what to do short of going and buying a replacement pci card.

Anyone know of any utilities or sensible things I can check before taking the machine apart and fitting a new card?

Try dhcp?

Problem with drivers?

Go into the device manager, any exclamation marks next to it?

Try disabling/re-enabling or removing it from the device manager and rebooting, you may need the drivers handy in case windows doesn’t find them again.

Had a problem where one of my PC’s wouldn’t connect to the router on cable or WiFi, only green light. Other devices would connect OK, even with the same cable and port. Rebooting the router sorted it.

Static IP or reserved?

Try dropping back to DHCP, see if it gives you an IP. That’ll give you a clue as to whether it’s pooched or not.

Also, +1 to bouncing the router.

Another thought……

If using dhcp, try running the following at a dos/cmd prompt

Ipconfig /release

Then

Ipconfig /renew

it’s that java thing from yesterday – your pc is probably running an Iranian nuclear reactor into the red right now

You know, I do try.

Static as in, outside my dhcp range and specified in the adaptor. I tried dhcp, i also tried as suggested :
uninstalling the drivers and applied new ones from the vendor site (acer)
rebooting the router (that was the first thing)
re-enabling the adaptor

but alas no joy. Think I had better start shopping for a new card before the wife blames me.

I have two small pci slots so I think I need something like this

http://www.ebuyer.com/229048-startech-10-100-pcie-network-card-pex100s

13 Notes, could be worse.

Cheers for the advice.

The other thing which makes me think the electronics have gone is the last couple of months or so its been slower to connect to the network, way after the desktop has loaded, now it’s really slow..infinitely slow.

I tried dhcp

and what happened, did it get a lease?

no, just the icon in the system tray with a red cross after thinking about it for 30 or seconds.

/release / renew doesn’t work as its not got that far.

1 green light on full, one flickering but slowly on the rj45. I have no idea what that means.

Solid green prop = physical connection
Flashing green is activity – usually not slow blinking

Life is too short, just slap another nic in and disable the onboard nic.

Ok we have all the try this try that, what about a systematic approach?

Pull up a command prompt and see what the IP address is?

You say you cannot connect to the router? I am assuming you cannot connect to the routers admin page? OR Do you mean you can’t connect to the internet? Sorry it may be a numpty question BUR rather than a scatter gun approach lets see what we can eliminate.

I would certainly use DHCP in your home network.

I would certainly use DHCP in your home network.

Why? if it’s a desktop it’s not exactly going to be changing networks much so why bother with dhcp? Tablet/phone/laptop – yes dhcp all the way but not for smething that doesn’t move.
Give it a static addressand then you don’t have to worry about whether the dhcp server is running properly.

Sorry, I’ve just read back through this as I’d forgotten the history.

Assuming there’s nothing else you’ve not told us – no recent changes, third party software firewalls, aggressive anti-virus – I’m leaning towards concurring that it’s broken. You’ve tried a different cable, presumably?

I would certainly use DHCP in your home network.

Why?

I think if you read what it says exactly it says “I would” as in “me”. I have not said “you should”.

However common practice would be pc’s on dhcp, desktop or other but its up to you, hence “I would”.

Well I don’t run dhcp on this desktop because I want the ip to be reliably fixed and it connects quicker; it’s a pretty simple way of achieving this and nothing to do with why the adaptor is not working suddenly.

Regarding ip address, the adaptor never got as far as an ip address. Querying with ipconfig said it was in a disconnected state. I’m pretty sure it’s knackered. A friend said he had a similar issue and a windows rebuild sorted it but I think I’d rather add a new nic for a tenner than rebuild to find that doesn’t work. I ordered a new nic last night.

Have you tried a different network cable? Classic symptoms of a damaged cable here.

That was my first thought but I ruled it out as “The same cable and port on the router work fine on a laptop.”

Uninstall the NIC software and let it find and reinstall itself.

I had something quite similar a few years ago, and the only thing that cured it was to shut down the PC and pull the plug (literally) so there was no residual power left in the board. In this case a simple reboot or shutdown wasn’t enough to bring the onboard NIC back to life.

Worth a go?

have you tried ping 127.0.0.1 to see if the card itself is ok?

As a last resort try resetting the TCP/IP stack, I don’t think this has been suggested.

At command prompt (must be run as administrator) type the following command

netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt

reboot the computer.

info here

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299357#FixItForMe

you could eliminate the operating system by downloading a liunx boot cd image and burn to cd and boot off that, it should pickup your hardware and get an ip using dhcp. if you get same issue then probably the nic

if you cant be arsed change the nic

fwiw im going with user error 😉

I tried everything on here bar the linux trick and nothing worked. I tried one last thing and that was to restore to before the last windows update from microsoft and that fixed it.

Only problem now is I have a PCIe gigabit card I don’t need. Might see it in the classifieds…for a couple of quid!

I wouldn’t class that as user error, more like microsoft, well it makes me feel better anyhow. Cheers for all the advice, learnt a couple of things.

just send the nic back for refund

i also think my post was preety spot on 😉

i’d call using a Microsoft OS user error whether it works or not lol 🙂

only messing with you, glad you fixed it.

I tried one last thing and that was to restore to before the last windows update from microsoft and that fixed it.

Cougar – Member
Assuming there’s nothing else you’ve not told us – no recent changes,

Damn it.

Glad you got it sorted, anyway.