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Problem with ethernet card
I have a Dimension 4500S running XP. Recently, I have been unable to connect to the internet through our cable modem. I have done the following troubleshooting:
-Not an internet access problem: my laptop connects wirelessly to the internet using the cable modem and a wireless router.
-Not a software problem: I tried IE, Firefox, Outlook. None of them can connect.
-Not a router problem: I tried connecting the line from the cable modem directly to the computer, rather than through the wireless router (which I use for my laptop), and it didn't work.
-I ran anti-virus software, spybot, and adaware with fairly recent definitions (from mid-July--I can't connect to the internet to download any new definitions). None of them found anything.
This leaves me thinking that the problem is with the ethernet card, but I've never really heard of an ethernet card just dying. The card in the machine is a GVC-REALTEK Ethernet 10/100 PCI Adapter. When I check in the hardware manager, it says this device is working properly, but the lights where the ethernet cable comes into the computer are not lit up like I think they should be if a signal was coming into the computer.
Any thoughts on what the problem might be? Thanks much for any help.
-Not an internet access problem: my laptop connects wirelessly to the internet using the cable modem and a wireless router.
-Not a software problem: I tried IE, Firefox, Outlook. None of them can connect.
-Not a router problem: I tried connecting the line from the cable modem directly to the computer, rather than through the wireless router (which I use for my laptop), and it didn't work.
-I ran anti-virus software, spybot, and adaware with fairly recent definitions (from mid-July--I can't connect to the internet to download any new definitions). None of them found anything.
This leaves me thinking that the problem is with the ethernet card, but I've never really heard of an ethernet card just dying. The card in the machine is a GVC-REALTEK Ethernet 10/100 PCI Adapter. When I check in the hardware manager, it says this device is working properly, but the lights where the ethernet cable comes into the computer are not lit up like I think they should be if a signal was coming into the computer.
Any thoughts on what the problem might be? Thanks much for any help.
- Steve,
Thanks. Here's the output:
Windows IP Configuration
Host Name: mini-me
Primary Dns Suffix:
Node Type: Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled: No
WINS Proxy Enabled: No
Ehternet Adapter Local Area Connection
Connection-specific DNS Suffix:
Description: GVC-REALTEK Ethernet 10/100 PCI Adapter
Physical Address: 00-C0-A8-7E-B0-3D
Dhcp Enabled: Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled: Yes
IP Address: 0.0.0.0
Subnet Mask: 0.0.0.0
IP Address: fe80::2c0:a8ff:fe7e:b03d%4
Default Gateway:
DHCP server: 255.255.255.255
DNS Servers: fec0:0:0:ffff::1%1
fec0:0:0:ffff::2%1
fec0:0:0:ffff::3%1
Tunnel adapter Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix:
Description: Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface
Physical Address: FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF-FF
Dhcp Enabled: No
IP Address: fe80::5445:5245:444%5
Default Gateway:
NetBIOS over Tcpip: Disabled Well it looks like it is not getting an IP address. You can try downloading and running winsockfix for Windows XP from the Here , but I doubt that this will solve the problem.
Looking back at your previous message I note that you say that the link light does not light up on the network card. This would better explain why you are not getting an IP address. Have you tried a different network cable? The first requirement of getting the network to work is that the link light must be lit when you are connecting to a device such as a modem or router that is powered on.
If changing the network cable doesn't fix the problem, you might want to consider purchasing a new network card. This is a rather cheap troubleshooting step considering that a new network card can be found for less than $10 after rebate. Just make sure you get a 1/2 card to put in your reduced size tower.
Another thing I want to stress is that whenever you change the device that is connecting directly to a cable modem, you have to do a complete reset of the network. This involves shutting down everything, waiting 5 minutes, turning on the modem, waiting another 5 minutes, then powering on the device directly connected to the modem. The reason for this is that a cable modem only works if the MAC address of the device (router or network card) is registered in the modem. It can only change that registration if the modem is shut down and restarted because that is the only time it will determine the MAC address of the device it is connecting to. It can only work with the device that is registered.
Steve
losingfaith
7 Posts
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Posted July 28th, 2005 18:00
Hi,
Have you tried going to My Computer, right click, hardware, device manager, and check see if the NIC (network interface card) is working ok or not.
The NIC in Dells is usually built in and I have found that adding a new card does not usually work. I had a lightning strike recently and only a motherboard replacement done yesterday by Dell worked. Till then everything else on the computer worked fine, all tests were fine, but I just could not connect to the Internet.
Raja
volcano11
2 Intern
•
27973 Posts
741
0
Posted July 28th, 2005 00:00
To help troubleshoot this problem, go to Start > Run and type cmd then click OK. In the command prompt window that opens, type ipconfig /all then hit the enter key. Write down the output from this command or select it and save it to a txt file, then copy this output into a reply to this message. Be sure to do this with the network adapter connected to one of the LAN ports on the router.
Steve