Shutdown windows7, reboot, network adapter problem

kofsphere

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Nov 2, 2012
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Dear all, could someone please give me some advice for the problem of my desktop, many thanks!

It all originated from I connected my Iphone 5 to my desktop to tether it, everything was fine. yesterday I unplugged the iphone and answered a phone call. however, when I re-plugged the usb to the desktop, the desktop could not identify it.

Then I decided to restart the desktop, but I found I could not shutdown it normally, the computer kept saying "shutting down" but after one hour or two it was still there. so I had to manually switch off the power. In fact this happened before and it always turned to be fine after a hard restart.

However, this time something was going wrong. the symptom remained- the tethering worked for several mins in the beginning once I rebooted the desktop but soon it failed to work, and the desktop cannot be shutdown normally either.

Windows can detect a problem with the network adapter (not the iphone) but cannot fix it.

After several rounds of reboot, the situation went worse- the desktop now cannot even go into windows 7, it stopped at the loading bios stage (it is a Gigabyte DS3 for i5 mother board) and kept rebooting itself.

I am using a i5 cpu, and the network adapter is a PCI wireless with due antennas.

- meanwhile my iphone 5 works perfectly with my laptop.

Thank you so much mates!
 
Solution
So does the BIOS complete POST and not continue to the OS loading stage or hang during post? Some BIOS allow you to have a verbose boot, where they will show you exactly what they're doing step by step. If it hangs on one step, then it's pretty easy to determine where the issue lies.

PudgyChicken

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May 17, 2010
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So first things first-- you need to be able to get into Windows.

Make sure your phone is not plugged in to your computer when booting, as it could confuse the BIOS.

Next pop in a Windows 7 installation disk and run startup repair (unless you can run startup repair normally).

If you still can't boot normally after running startup repair, try booting into Safe Mode.

As I don't know what software you're using to tether your phone to your computer, I don't know if there are any known issues with it. However, I would still recommend uninstalling the tethering software. I would also go into the computer hardware section of the system management console and disable the virtual adapter that the program uses if it's not removed with the tethering software.

You should check msconfig to make sure there are no processes starting with Windows that are related to the tethering software. You should also make sure that your hosts file hasn't been tampered with my the software.

You should at this point re-install the drivers for your wireless adapter just to make sure there's nothing wrong on that front.

Finally you should reboot into Windows, at which point I don't expect that you should have any issues.

As I'm not an iOS user, I don't know about different tethering applications. In Android, I can create a wifi hotspot and connect my laptop to it. If you have that capability in iOS, it would make sense to use that instead of any third party tethering software which could potentially be harmful.

Hope this helps!
 

kofsphere

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Nov 2, 2012
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Many thanks PudgyChicken!

However I have not reached the stage which you just described-

The situation at the moment is worse: I cannot even pass through the bios stage after I boot the desktop, so I cannot get into the stage of "loading any repair disc".

I am using an iphone 5 under the UK carrier "3" which allows users to tether as freely as they can (I think AT&T also does so). The iphone still works perfectly with my laptop (I am using it right now)

One of my friends reminded me that there might be some compatible problems between windows 7 and the PCI network adapter- I will try to remove it from my motherboard next week as I don't have the crew driver with me right now- I will update what happens then

honestly I wish I can have it working, otherwise I have to first examine where is the damage and then send it to repair- sad :(
 

PudgyChicken

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May 17, 2010
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So does the BIOS complete POST and not continue to the OS loading stage or hang during post? Some BIOS allow you to have a verbose boot, where they will show you exactly what they're doing step by step. If it hangs on one step, then it's pretty easy to determine where the issue lies.
 
Solution

kofsphere

Honorable
Nov 2, 2012
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10,510



Hi Mate, many thanks for the reply, the problem has finally been solved just before I give up.

surprisingly, the problem is the HDMI cable !!! which I NEVER expected,

I suspected it was the problem of the graphic card (nvidia Ti560), so I tried to connect the monitor to the intel HD motherboard graphic card- I was trying to save some effort so I used a spare VGA cable- and, it worked!!! and after some switch I finally spot the culprit- the HDMI cable!

with the VGA cable I can enter the safe mode, there I jumped back to a previous backup point- exactly before a critical windows update, after some mins and a reboot everything went well!

so I think the problem was 1) there might be a unexpected shut-down during the windows update (I have no idea, but there is a possibility)
2) at the same time! the HDMI cable failed- this sounds a bit ridiculous but this is what just happened.

now I am using the VGA cable and everything is back to normal.

Many thanks, mate! Thank goodness the BIOS is not down which save me a lot of effort.
 

kofsphere

Honorable
Nov 2, 2012
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10,510
also mention that I was trying to extensively reboot the computer when it cannot be shut-down normally, so this may have some impact on some of the components

and this is a lesson