I just bought a GA-EP35-DS3R. Everything went smoothly in the setup except that the networking seems to not work. I get no light turning on when I plug the network cable in, and the OS says that no network cable is plugged in. I can move the same cable to another system and it works fine. I have verified the internal LAN option is enabled in the BIOS.

I'm worried the mobo is simply defective. Any ideas before I start trying to do an RMA? I'd hate to have to rebuild the whole system (including remounting the CPU heatsink) for nothing, but I'm stumped here.

Other specs:
Intel E8400, GeForce 8800GTS, 425w PSU

Any yellow check marks in the Device Manager?

No, as far as Windows is concerned, the device is totally working except that there's no cable plugged in.

Run>cmd>ipconfig

What did you get?

Are you using an RJ45 - 8 pin cable? Do you or someone you know have a network card you can put in a PCI slot to test with?

I'm at work now so I can't run ipconfig. If I were to run it, I'm pretty sure it would look just like it does when you have a network cable unplugged, but I'll give it a shot when I get home.

I don't have a PCI network card lying around anywhere, but I can literally take the exact same cable, and move the end plugged into the new computer, and plug it into the old computer, and it fires up and works, so I'm confident it's not a network issue.

The Gigabyte website doesn't list a GA-EP35-DSR3 motherboard.

@ Jim_L9 He has the dyslectic version.

Right I follow you, but you might only have to release and renew the IP Address.

Top title fixed, dyslexia cured. Network issues pending :-)

The lack of a link light typically indicates a hardware issue.

Today we found the cure for dyslexia. 06-06-2008.

A yad we will rebmemer.

What speed port are you connecting it to? At 10 Mbps the speed light should be out and green at 100 and orange at 1Gbps. The other LED is for data activity. Are you connecting it to the right port on your router? Perhaps your other PC does auto crossover and the new one doesn't. If you had a RJ-45 loopback you could check for link without any external device.

Check the 8 pins in the RJ-45 and make sure they aren't bent or stuck in a retracted position. I've seen the pins stuck one in a while. Pins 1,2,3 and 6 are the ones used for the LAN.

Try the Smart LAN feature in the BIOS. It will check for a good cable and the length of said cable.

Exactly like this, there is a space between ipconfig and forward slash:

ipconfig

ipconfig /release
you should get all 0.0.0

ipconfig /renew

Thanks, I'll try these suggestions in a couple of hours when I get home. They look like very good suggestions.

the Smart LAN feature just sits there, every so often it briefly flashes up something like 0m lengths for all the pins.

ipconfig just says "Media disconnected" everywhere. Renewing says it can't do it with the media disconnected.

The USB ports that are on the same riser as the network port all work just fine.

Also, the networking also does not work under Linux, with essentially the same results, where no network is present.

My network is gigabit ethernet. My other systems all give me a nice orange light when I plug the cable end into them. This one: nothing.

Hey a breakthrough! The little extra 12V power connector that connects next to the big one was loose. Plugging it back in and doing a power cycle and cold reboot fixed my LAN issues!

I never would have guessed the only consequence to missing a power connector would be that the onboard LAN wouldn't work. Go figure.