Tom's Hardware > Forum > General Networking > WAN/LAN > Ethernet Card not working. Please help!
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ONE BAD OMEN   08-20-2009 at 11:12:48 AM

Hi, Any help is greatly appreciated.

So I have two computers that are right next to each other. One is my dad's (Windows XP Home 32 Bit) and the other is mine (Windows Vista Home Premium 64 Bit). About 4 days ago there was a huge thunderstorm right over the house which created a power outage and it caused a power surge. both computers were on when it happened. After the power and cable internet got turned back on I noticed that both computers were working but neither would connect to the internet.

Come to find out the router was fried, yet the modem was fine. So I went out and got a new router and got it all hooked up. The internet still wasn't working. My dad got a new NIC card (Linksys - EtherFast Desktop 10/100 PCI Card) for his comp and installed it. Now the internet works on that computer. So what I think happened was the power surge fried the router and went through the Ethernet cables and fried the Ethernet port on both of our motherboards.

Today I went and got an NIC card (Linksys - 10/100/1000 Gigabit Network Adapter) for my computer. After reading the reviews I noticed a lot of people said that the card didn't come out of the box supporting Vista but there was a driver you could download for vista support (RTL8169/8110 Family PCI Gigabit Ethernet Nic). I've tried multiple times saving the driver onto a flash drive from my dad's computer and then running it on my computer (with there being a long list of all the updates for that driver here). When I try to install the newer drivers for the vista x64 version it says that there is no hardware detected. But when I try to install some of the older drivers for the vista x64 version it says that it installed just fine. Yet I still can't connect to the internet and Windows Device Manager says the "device is not configured correctly (Code 1)". All the reviews I'm reading where people have installed this driver seem to have not had any problems.

Any ideas or suggestions?
Thanks.

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sweeyang   08-22-2009 at 07:42:20 PM

I have the exactly same problem you are facing now. I need help too

Reply to sweeyang
bnot   09-04-2009 at 02:38:37 PM

Your motherboard might be fried at more places than just the ethernet port. Hard to say. Maybe you can borrow your fathers ethernet card for a second and try with that so you can rule out the motherboard. By the way the RTL8169 NIC you bought is a piece of *** at high speeds. It only works properly at 100Mbit.

Hope that helps a bit.

J.

Reply to bnot
foxy_roxy   09-16-2009 at 07:17:53 PM

As bnot said in "power surge affected computers" exhibit weird and often hard to diagnose problems. You could borrow your father's ethernet card and install the driver and see what your system comes up with AND/OR you can also try your ethernet card in your father's computer and see if it works in your father's computer. One way or the other you can try to rule out that the card itself is the problem [which is cheaper to swap/exchange] than a fried motherboard exhibiting weird symptoms :pfff:

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