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My friends computer has a strange issue, it had not been on for 2 weeks, and was working fine. Yesterday it was turned on and the onboard NIC was no longer working or showing up. Tried switching to the 2nd onboard NIC that still had the light on, that one also did not work or show up in windows. The I proceeded to go through 4 different PCI NICs in different PCI slots. They all showed up in windows, installed drivers, although the lights never came on in the cards and showed as disconnected in windows. Tried several different known working cables, along with bringing it back to my place to see if it was the cable modem. Nothing has seemed to work, I could def use some advice on what the problem may be...because I am pretty well baffled by the behavior. Computer seems to be working fine besides this bizzare networking issue. Anyone with an idea, feel free to post away with some advice.

AMD A64X2
2G DDR2
NV 7800
Windows XP

Did you disable the onboard NICs in the BIOS?

Scenario:
Both the cable modem and PC NIC port are fried, when you tested at your location, you did so using the bad PC NIC?

Maybe the Windows network stack has got borked? Try an Ubuntu live CD and see if it works, that should show whether you are fighting software or hardware issues.

Contingency wrote:

Scenario:
Both the cable modem and PC NIC port are fried, when you tested at your location, you did so using the bad PC NIC?

This or you're using a bad Ethernet cable.

Actually I think NotFred is more likely correct.

This sounds more like a driver or network stack issue than hardware failure especially since both onboard and card nic's are showing the same issue.
Especially since he is checking the lights on the socket.

Having seen something similar I would try booting up in safe mode and removing ALL nic drivers from the device manager.
(You may want to check add/remote program as well.)

Reboot and see if windows picks up the onboard nics and if so install the LATEST drivers.

If notfred's suggestion works and mine does not then you are looking at a wipe and reinstall.

Isn't there a program that will rebuild/reset the TCP/IP Stack in XP. It has been years since I used it but I do believe that there was a utility to do this.

It might be something to checkout before a wipe and reinstall at least.

One thing you can do from the command line:

Open up the command prompt as an administrator
Type the following:

"netsh int ip reset resetlog.txt"
"netsh winsock reset"

then reboot.

You can also try getting the latest NIC driver. If it's a Realtek NIC, get one straight from them and not the motherboard maker. I've had an updated Realtek driver fix just this problem.

bthylafh wrote:

One thing you can do from the command line:

Open up the command prompt as an administrator
Type the following:

"netsh int ip reset resetlog.txt"
"netsh winsock reset"

then reboot.

You can also try getting the latest NIC driver. If it's a Realtek NIC, get one straight from them and not the motherboard maker. I've had an updated Realtek driver fix just this problem.

This. Pretty much says it all. If the above doesn't work, check the BIOS too; reset to defaults if necessary, or see if there is an updated version and re-flash.

I went through something similar about a month ago with a VM running on ESX. Called VMware support and worked with them to figure it out. Turned out to be an issue with IPSec in Windows. (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/912023). Go with notfred's suggestion, and try running a live CD to determine if it's a hardware or software issue first.

To reply back to all the questions, yes both onboard ports are enabled in the bios, I had turned it both on and off multiple times to no change. The replacement PCI NICs I used along with the cable were both known working parts. I have the most current bios available as it is an epox board and they have since gone out of buisiness. Going to try the live CD and see if that works.

When you do an ipconfig what do you get? 0.0.0.0 usually means disabled network card/stack. 169.x.x.x usually means something broken in regards to DHCP. (when windows can't find a dhcp server, it grabs an address in the 169 network.)

What anti-virus/internet security program do you use? Any chance it has been set to block all network traffic? You could do that with ZoneAlarm (been years since I used it). Hit a button on the interface and it would block all in/out network traffic until you hit the same button again.

It doesn't show anything for a ipconfig beyond saying the media is disconnected. Windows acts like there is nothing connected to the NIC, although the cable is plugged in.

LiveCD to verify. Windows networking stack is horked.

So any way to fix the networking stack, or is it time for a re install?

Did you try the commands I posted?

Yeah I did, still showing the same problem with the cable showing up as disconnected.

This might help:

http://majorgeeks.com/WinSock_XP_Fix_d4372.html

If this fails, you could try "sfc /scannow", and if that fails, all I can suggest is doing a repair install of Windows.

Well going to give that a try then, just did a bios upgrade on it in hopes the onboard would show back up, but no go on that.

Well no go on both, guess its time for a nuke and reinstall....was trying to avoid that but looks like it is the only solution. It just is so strange how this completely came out of the blue...and nothing seems to be able to fix it.

Did you try a Linux livecd yet? I didn't see any mention, and it's important to be certain it's software before you nuke the installed copy.

Well figured out the issue, PCI slot I had the card in was damaged, put another card in a different PCI slot worked fine. No idea what caused all the damage though. Thanks for all the help everyone, funny how I ended up trying to use the only damaged PCI slot on the board too...friend will be happy to get the system back minus a nuke from orbit too.

Starfalcon wrote:

Well figured out the issue, PCI slot I had the card in was damaged, put another card in a different PCI slot worked fine.

Starfalcon wrote:

The I proceeded to go through 4 different PCI NICs in different PCI slots.

I used to think it was cynical to automatically assume the person at the other end of the line was either an idiot or a liar. After seeing this play a out a half dozen or so times, I realized there was an element of truth in it.

There could've been some bad NICs in the mix as well, so it could have also been bad luck (depending on which NICs were tried in each slot).

Recently had a problem exactly like this one - NIC was present but didn't work, period, full stop.

Only thing is, turned out to be some stray charge in the PSU. Unplugging it from the wall and re-plugging it did the trick.

just brew it! wrote:

There could've been some bad NICs in the mix as well, so it could have also been bad luck (depending on which NICs were tried in each slot).

Yeah looks like I had a few defective NIC cards too...I ended up tossing 4 of them. Most had been in a box for years anyway, the trusty 3c905-tx saves the day. I ended up having the defective ones in good slots and the good one in the defective one. Less clutter FTW.