Networking Adapter Gone Bad?

enxio27 · 19 Sep 2017

I'm putting this in this forum instead of in Networking because I suspect it's a hardware issue.

I recently started having what I thought were issues with a (relatively new) SATA hard drive. I bought a new hard drive to replace it, but didn't have time to mess with it for a little while (I have another computer to use, so it wasn't time critical). A few days ago, I decided to get busy with that hard drive replacement, and lo and behold, the hard drive is fine, but there is no networking at all (neither wired nor wireless). The Ethernet, at least, was working just fine the last time I used the computer. I tried reinstalling the driver, and it says it can't find an adapter. IPCONFIG seems to agree. In addition, now the system suddenly doesn't seem to recognize my DVD-ROM drive (it did a few days ago, before it started recognizing the hard drive again).

What else can I do to troubleshoot this? I'm starting to wonder whether the motherboard itself is the issue. It's a Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2, a little long in the tooth, but still adequate for my needs, technology-wise.

samuria · 19 Sep 2017

Have you tried reseting the bios or checking for bios update

enxio27 · 19 Sep 2017

samuria said:

Have you tried reseting the bios or checking for bios update

There is a slightly newer bios (a few months after the one I have), but not sure what difference this would make. Everything was working fine until it appeared the hard drive was going bad. At that point, I shut it down and walked away until a few days ago when I was preparing to install the replacement hard drive.

enxio27 · 20 Sep 2017

No other troubleshooting ideas? What could cause the onboard networking adapter not to be found, when it was working just fine until now? No changes (hardware or software) have been made to the system at all since that time.

mrjimphelps · 20 Sep 2017

Try replacing your CMOS battery. A bad CMOS battery can cause motherboard issues.

If that doesn't do it, get an Ethernet card. Here's one for $11.50 on Amazon.com:

https://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-1000...=ethernet+card

As for your DVD drive, try plugging it into a different SATA port, or try using a different SATA cable. And try using a different SATA power connector.

If you have a couple of good SATA ports, and if you get a network card and a new CMOS battery, maybe you can get a couple more years out of your motherboard.

strollin · 20 Sep 2017

I've had several onboard NICs fail over the years, simple matter to replace with either a card or USB dongle.

enxio27 · 21 Sep 2017

The error message I get when I try to reinstall the driver is this: "The Realtek Network Controller was not found. If deep sleep mode is enabled Please plug the cable." I did a search on that error message and tried everything that was suggested, all to no avail. I finally gave up and went to Fry's and bought a LAN card. Not the solution I was hoping for, but it's working now. I did go into the card's settings after I installed it and turned off the sleep mode so that this won't happen again.

As for the optical drive, that turned out to be operator error. I forgot that I had unplugged the power cable from the drive while I was getting ready to swap out hard drives.

The best news is that the hard drive I thought was dead (which was what started all of this mess) is fine. My computer and I are now happy campers. Thank you to everyone who tried to help!