[Pation]

Hey, I've been trying to deal with a frustrating ethernet problem for the past few days, and after searching many forums, I decided to turn to the experts

Bold - executive summary


I just reformatted a Dell Latitude D600 laptop, and have been fixing various problems, mostly concerning the wireless and ethernet. I fixed the wireless (installed some updates, I'm not quite sure what the problem was in the first place, that's another story), but the ethernet stubbornly refused to be recognized.

I downloaded the driver from the Dell site (called R133052) and tried installing it to no avail.

After awhile with with a Dell agent, we realized that (embarrassingly) it had been disabled in the BIOS. I don't know how it happened, but I went into the BIOS, enabled it, and then tried reinstalling the driver.

Boring detail - when I start the .exe for the driver, it looks like the typical driver setup except that it automatically uninstalls the driver if it is already installed, and when I start it again, it installs it.

So I did the uninstall-install once, and it didn't work. Then, I did remote access with the Dell agent (a frightening interesting process), and he did the same thing, and it worked. When I plugged in the ethernet cord, it found the internet and all seemed excellent until I bluescreened. I shrugged it off as some sort of driver conflict that could be easily resolved, so I told the patient Dell agent that everything was fine.

I can't get it to work again.

I've updated up to SP3 and combed for any other updates I might need.


I've uninstall-reinstalled the driver numerous times. The Device Manager can see the Ethernet Controller now (since it has been enabled in the BIOS), but no matter what I do in the Hardware Update Wizard, it says it can't see/find the driver.

Thanks,
Pation

[Pation]

This is the ipconfig/all:


Windows IP Configuration


Host Name .................xxDELLXX

Primary Dns Suffix......

Node Type..................Hybrid

IP Routing Enabled......No

WINS Proxy Enabled......No

DNS Suffix Search List..xxxxx

Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection 3:



Connection-specific DNS Suffix...xxxxx

Description...................Dell Wireless 1450 Dual Band WLAN Mini-PCI Card

Physical Address..............xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Dhcp Enabled..................Yes

Autoconfiguration Enabled.....Yes

IP Address....................192.168.1.104

Subnet Mask...................255.255.255.0

Default Gateway...............192.168.1.1

DHCP Server...................192.168.1.1

DNS Servers...................207.5.171.1
......207.5.171.2

Lease Obtained...today
Lease Expires....tomorrow

[Pation]

As you'll notice, it has this strange "Connection 3" business, which it had in the problems that I had with it before.

Before I updated to SP2, it would show the ethernet connection icon in the system tray, except it would say "wireless connection 6"... All a bit confuzzling.

[JohnWill]

The numbering of the connections is just a cosmetic thing, you can rename them in XP to anything you like.

[Pation]

Well that's nice to know I suppose... as for the actual problem....

[JohnWill]

I'm thinking maybe it's the actual NIC that is defective, the blue screen isn't a good sign.

[Pation]

Yes... the blue screen was a little bit frightening. Should I do some sort of hardware test that can discern the health of the NIC? Is a replacement feasible? Expensive? I'm searching a little right now to see how difficult the card is to access on this model...

[JohnWill]

Is this a computer you received new? It sounds like the NIC was troublesome and someone disabled it before.

You can use a PCMCIA or USB connected Ethernet NIC to replace it if it's truly defective. Since it's part of the motherboard, a direct replacement isn't really a practical option.

[Pation]

History of the computer:

Was bought, used, 4 years ago (college computer).

Ethernet worked fine up until about 8 months ago, when it was brought overseas (no-one did any work on it at any point).

Not quite clear whether it was working in the past 8 months because it wasn't used, but apparently there was the yellow exclamation point in device manager way back then.

As for anyone disabling it before, it is highly unlikely. Maybe it just .."became" defective in the past few months. It's a pretty old computer.

Thanks, I suppose. Is there anything that might tell me if it's worth working on it more, like a hardware test? Otherwise, I'm eyeing the PCMCIA ethernet card.

p.s. How do you earn a living, O Great One?

[JohnWill]

Well, you could boot with a Linux Live CD and see if networking works, they normally have the drivers for most environments.

I am mostly retired at this point, though I still do work for a few of my clients that haven't transitioned to a new source. My primary job for years was as an aerospace consultant designing fuel systems for military and commercial aircraft.