New
#1
wierdest problem with network driver
I noticed in the past few weeks when i boot into home premium on my dell dimension E521 (which was upgraded from Windows xp media center to Vista home premium then to windows 7), it takes a bit to load the network driver and the icon spins around till it connects. Once it stops it connects fine but, when i try to open Devices and Printers- nothing shows up.
Also Office Word 2007 will not load and crashes when this happens and if i try to even print in Notepad- Notepad crashes because the Print Box doesn't even come up.
This computer was upgraded a year ago and i have had no problems since. It just recently started to do this about 4 wks ago. Nothing was installed except the normal windows updates and the problem did not start after the updates but about a week later. The network card is on the motherboard and it is the dell 10 Broadcom 440x 10/100 Intergrated Controller. There are no upgraded drivers for it but i uninstalled the driver and allowed windows to find it again. Once i did this- walla! i got the printers and driver window to open and show everything in it.
Problem though, once I shut down the computer for the night and came back to it the next day I had the same exact problem. This time i uninstalled the driver and tried to reinstall it from dell's site.
That worked but again after another cold start I got the same problem.
Since the network card is on the motherboard if i bypass it and add another ethernet card to the computer do you think this would solve my problem since it will look for a different driver?
I tried doing a system restore to one month back prior to the installed updates but 3/4 in Windows said it could not do the system restore and asked if i wanted to put it back to the way it was and of course i said yes.
I really do not want to wipe the drive and start all over because my version of windows 7 is an upgrade not the full OS.
I do have clone of the computer prior to all this happening and i could try to reinstall it and see what happens but before I go and do this and find the same problem because the network card is the problem- do you think i should just try putting another card on first?
any help would be appreciated
robin