hello, this is my first post so i apologize if i put this in the wrong place. I am currently having problems on a relatively new Dell PC running Vista. Would like any helpful suggestions/comments.
Basically, the problem is that I can no longer connect to the internet anymore from my PC. Internet was working fine until yesterday, when there were some thunderstorms in the local area which knocked out service/power. Our router apparently got fried from this but after getting a new one we were able to restore the wireless in our home plus internet connection to other computers.
However, ONE of our PCs is still not able to connect to the internet. Right now I’m just plugging it directly into the wall (not using switch). I’ve tried different ethernet cables yet it stil says “network cable is unplugged”. At first I thought maybe the ethernet drop was busted, but if i plug my Macbook directly into the same ethernet drop in the wall, that works perfectly.
So then I thought maybe the Ethernet card in the PC (Realtek RTL8168C(P)/8111C(P) Family PCI-E Gigabit Ethernit NIC) somehow got busted during the storm too..but according to Vista, “the device is working properly”. I even downloaded a utility for it from Realtek to run a series of diagnostic tests, and everything seems to work fine (it “passed” all the tests).
So now I am just wondering what could possibly be wrong. I have tried restarting and shutting down the PC multiple times, and to no avail. It acts like there is nothing plugged in at all.
