I know there’s a few PC savvy people on here, so a last ditch please for help.

Came home the other night and when attempting to connect to the Internet I received the following error : Error 106 (net:: ERR_INTERNET_DISCONNECTED) : The Internet connection has been lost

So I trundled off to Contron Panel>Network Connections to try and repair and found that it was now empty. At this point I asked my wife if anything funny had happened whilst she was in the computer, she is a technophobe and uses it out of necessity rather than choice, and has had a few accidents in the past. Apparently whilst we were hit with a thunderstorm she was checking e-mail, she then ran out to retrieve washing from the line when the storm hit and came back to find the screen frozen and some message about loss of Network, she couldn’t shut down before going to work so switched off at the wall.

I cannot see any Network Devices listed under the Hardware Manager.

I’ve tried all of the steps listed here : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/825826 (Including the Advanced Troubleshooting)

I’ve borrowed a Network card from work and installed to try and connect via this, but the PC hasn’t recognised the new hardware.

Any ideas?

The PC is about 5 years old now and I’ve had a Video card fail before, and the fan is starting to get noisy, so this might be time to concded defeat and retire it and get something new.

If you boot into Safe Mode With Networking, does anything network related appear?

I’d take the NIC out

shutdown > restart > shutdown > reinstall the NIC > restart

and see if it picks it up again

I’ve had a router taken out in a thunderstorm before of course it could be just coincidence with yours.

If no devices appear in the ‘Network Connections’ then the PC isn’t recognizing the network card. I would check the hardware manager to see if there is any unrecognized hardware and check the network connection on the motherboard to see if any lights appear when you plug the cable in.