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Identify network card in DOS

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7 replies

by jstarrett

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I need to ghost a copy of an outside customers PC for a legal matter. Because of legal issues, I cannot start Windows or open the box. Is there a DOS utility to determine the type of network card in a PC. I have been ghosting via parallel port, but it takes a long time, and I want to speed up the process.

7 replies

by stillatit

1. If you can reach in and make a copy of the registry files to another machine, you should see the drivers under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/HARDWARE/RESOURCEMAP/OtherDrivers

2. If you can boot DOS6 from a floppy, and you have a FAT disk, browse the \windows\sytem32 or \winnt\system32\drivers, you should see the driver files there.

3. Check out www.windrivers.com/network
They have some identification utilities, and they also suggest that using an NE2000 generic driver may work for some genericcards.

4. 3com has a utility on its site which can identify some of their cards.

Good luck.

Other things to try:
3com has a utility on their website which will identify a few of their cards.

by barry hensley

I don't know of a generic utility that will identify the network card. However, you can use generic tools to scan for IRQs and Ports, etc. giving you some idea where the card may be located on the bus, etc. Something like the old PC Tools or Norton Utilities can get the job done.

There's a pretty good chance that the card is from one of a handful of network card manufacturers. These manufacturers offer DOS based configuration utilities for their cards. Check out Intel, 3Com, D-Link, SMC, LinkSys, etc. After downloading the configuration utilities from these sites, you may be able to communicate with the card and successfully identify it.

Also, the NE2000 is a very popular generic driver that may work. You could configure Ghost to use this driver but, if the card is from 3Com or Intel, it won't work.

Lastly, look on the outside of the box at the network card connector. Sometimes the mfg puts identifying marks here.

by mark fenwick

I regularly use Martin Malik?s Hardware Info program to audit the hardware in a PC. It is available in both Windows and DOS versions and the DOS version detects almost all the hardware you could want, including most types of Network card.

You can get an evaluation copy from http://www.hwinfo.com and a full non-commercial single copy license will set you back $20, which includes free lifetime updates.

Hope this helps

Mark

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