Enabling ethernet connection (in safe mode?).

Question

Hi all,   I was having wireless connectivity issues earlier this year which luckily have all been sorted out.  In that process, though, I got some new issues. :smileytongue:   My neighbor at the time fancied himself quite the computer whiz and attempted to help me with the problems.  One thing he did was go into safe mode, I think, and disabled my ability to connect to the internet via ethernet cord.  So now I can only connect to the internet using wireless and no options for connecting via cable present themselves as far as I've been able to find.   I'd like to use my ethernet cable to connect at times and I'm hoping someone will be able to tell me how to enable that.    Thanks in advance!   Edited to add: I've got an Inspiron 600m if that's useful information. Message Edited by kdm_wildfire on 10-21-2006 02:06 PM

bacillus · Answer

can you not enable the device in device manager?

jmwills · Answer

Control Panel>Network Connections>Local Area Connections Right Click the Adapter to Enable Pay no attention to that Whiz over there behind the curtain.

kdm_wildfire · Answer

jmwills, There's no option for Local Area connections.  Only wireless.  The option used to be there before he did whatever he did.      bacillus, I've poked around in device manager but haven't found anything that stands out but I'm not completely sure what the device would be listed under.     I might just have to it up and send the guy an email even though he was a bit of a creepy jerk.  Thanks for trying to help! :)

bacillus · Answer

if you don't see your LAN listed under network adapters in device manager then I suspect your friend had gone into bios and disabled it from in there.

to enter bios you'll need to tap F2 at startup and look at all the pages till you find the one with LAN enable/disable option.

if that's the problem then remember to choose save settings when leaving bios setup.

btw I sometimes find you have to reboot twice for the LAN to show up in windows after enabling it in bios.

good luck.

jmwills · Answer

It has to be in there unless he physically yanked it out, which I doubt!

kdm_wildfire · Answer

bacillus,   Thank you!  That's exactly what I needed.  I remembered him tapping a F-key to get into it which is why I mistook it for safe mode.  It's enabled and working great now.

bacillus · Answer

excellent news...

jmwills · Answer

Thats a little extreme to turn off a NIC card.

Networking, Internet, & Bluetooth

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