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Network card not working

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9 replies

by hornbostel

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Ok here we go. I just had to put a new hard drive in to an Inspiron 1100, due to the old one crashed. I put Winxp pro back on, and started loading drivers. My problem is that my network card will not work. XP will find it and install the driver and it say's it working properly in the device manager but i get the message that a network cable is unplugged. ipconfig say's media state media disconnected. I have tried unistalling and reinstalling the network card updateing the driver rolling back the driver but to no avail. also i have switched cables i have used different ethernet ports in the office. Now i have been told that if you can ping 127.0.0.1 that your network card is working and i can ping that address.
I need this computer up and running by Monday, I hope i make the deadline.
thanks

9 replies

by tintoman

The ability to ping 127.0.0.1 does not mean that your network card works properly, it does however mean that the drivers are loaded and the card is communicating with the operating system.
If you are sure that the ethernet cable is ok and that all other computers on your network have connectivity to your router/switch or whatever then there seems little doubt that that the network card is faulty, I would try to swap it with a new one or a known good one before panicking too much

by hornbostel

The network card is intergrated, the funny thing about it is that before the hard drive crashed it worked, i have only worked here about 5 months as their IT person, but i do remember that this laptop the network work card wasn't working and he was using a d-link ethernet notebook adapter, one of our corporate IT guys were here and he looked at the laptop and got the onboard network card working but i'm not quite sure of he did it and he no longer works for the company.

by tintoman

Sorry I didn't twig this was a notebook duh!
perhaps then windows has loaded generic drivers for the integrated lan and you will need to download drivers from Dell for this to work properly.
Obviously you will need another computer with internet access to do this and a CD writer or flash drive too

by hornbostel

I did use my computer to download the drivers and put them on my flash drive and loaded them and still didn't work. i tried the drivers that came on the disk with the laptop and i tried the new drivers from dell.

by tintoman

Does the status of the connection show as enabled in network connections?

by hornbostel

Yes it is enabled i have tried enabling and disabling it. but it keeps popping up in the system tray a network cable is unplugged. i tried hooking it up to my computers network cable and still nothing.

by michael kassner

Is the Local Area Connection enabled in the Network Connections area? If so have you tried to repair the connection?

Also do you have a wireless network adapter on that notebook? Is it enabled? If so try it with the wireless network adapter disabled.

by hornbostel

Yes the local area connection is enabled and i didn't think to do a repair. But i just tried and the repair is grayed out when disabled and enabled. so repair is out of the question right now. also there is no internal wireless card he uses a wireless adapter.

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