Network controller suddenly disappears?

[MHuber]

Hi All,

Relatively new home build - other than a memory RMA, working flawlessly for past four months.

specs:

Core i5-750, Gigabyte p55a-ud3 (onboard Realtek 8111D NIC), windows 7 64-bit.

I got home from work today to find no internet connection - checked with my work laptop, worked fine on all 4 router connections, so no ISP or router problem. Then I noticed that there was no green "plugged in" light on either PC connection or connection to router. I tried removing and reinstalling drivers (a few versions), and get a "controller was not found" message, and also noticed that there is no Realtek controller (and no "Network Adapters" dropdown, for that matter) in the device manager.

Any suggestions? I'm really at a loss here, help would really be appreciated.

 

[MHuber]

Okay, so I was just commiserating with the guy across the hall, and he told me that there was a serious lightning storm this morning while I was gone - probably the cause, but a few problems:

Entire system on good surge protector
Everything but this controller functions perfectly, and no visible damage at all on motherboard
All nearby usb/audio ports on board work
The "Gateway" (At&t uverse combo modem, router, tv receiver, splitter) still works perfectly, and all ports are functional.

The only entrance point would be the phone lines, but the box is in the basement, and as I understand, should be grounded.

Anyone?

 

[eloric]

Um. this may sound a bit strange, but did you unplug everything, wait for 30 seconds, and plug it back in? In other words, give a serious chance to discharge all the capacitors with a cold restart.

Lightning is a funny thing, and even if there is no direct strike, those electrons can jump in strange ways no matter how grounded or where it is located, even if there was no loss or surge of power. You could be SOL.

 

[MHuber]

Um. this may sound a bit strange, but did you unplug everything, wait for 30 seconds, and plug it back in? In other words, give a serious chance to discharge all the capacitors with a cold restart.

Lightning is a funny thing, and even if there is no direct strike, those electrons can jump in strange ways no matter how grounded or where it is located, even if there was no loss or surge of power. You could be SOL.

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, before I opened the tower up to look for damage I took it into the kitchen (to get off the carpet), so it had about 5-10 minutes to discharge capacitors. Guess I just got screwed by nature, but it's not all bad - I have an excuse to get a new mobo that I can crossfire with a little down the road, and I have a usb wireless adapter to hold me over for now.

Does anyone know anything about phone wiring? I want to get down to the basement and make sure everything is grounded properly - maybe I can get AT&T to pay for my new mobo.

 

[SlickRickDFW]

I had a similar situation on a new PowerSpec PC I was setting up for a family member. I had Win7 Pro installed on the unit for a few days loading software. During one afternoon, I believe the PC went into Deep Sleep Mode due to the Win7 setting. The RealTek Network Controller just disappeared as mentioned in the article. I powered up/down many times, but never "unplugged" the unit. Sure enough.... I unplugged and that fixed the problem! Thanks for the suggestion. I had previously known to power units down, but I had forgotten the idea to unplug the cord...