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Problem with a NIC and roadrunner

C

coolred

Diamond Member
My aunt has a gateway computer with roadrunner. The gateway came installed with a NIC, so we didn't use the one offered by roadrunner. This had been working fine for several months, when all of a sudden she started the computer one day and the PC light was not lite on the modem. She called roadrunner and they talked her through some stuff. They eventually discovered there was no network adapter listed under device manager. Roadrunner said they could not help till this was fixed. I talked her through several things to try and get it reinstalled. I had her take it out and reinstall it, windows did not detect it and a manual install did not work. I testes a 56K modem in the same slot which was detected, so that should have ruled out it being a problem with the PCI slot. So I got another NIC and had her install that in the same slot as well as another slot, windows did not detect and a manual install did not work. She bought a new mouse so I had her install that throught he USB port, it was immediately detected by windows, so PnP is working. So what I am at now is the PCI slot seems okay, the NIC seems okay, even if it isn't we have another, and PnP seems to be working, but yet nothing shows up under device manager as a network adapter, and she still has no roadrunner, what do I do next?
 
What is the OS?

Did you try to detect it using the ADD New Hardware in Control Panel.

Or:

In Win98, installations of PCI LAN card are at times creating a "Ghost" device, i.e. malfunction software adapter stays in the system, and does not let the correct drivers settings to be installed.

You can try to correct it by:

Remove all NIC installation from the Control Panel / System properties.

Shut off the computer, take out the NIC, and reboot. Check again Control Panel / System properties. If there is any installation of the NIC remove it, and shut off again.

Shut off the computer, re-install the NIC, and let it be detected.
Install back all Network drivers, and protocols, and go over the settings.

In most cases this process will clean the system of Hardware related conflict of the NIC.
 
Well under device manager, under the network adapters thing, there is one thing listed, a dial up adapter. I don't see anything listed that would be a NIC, is there somewhere else I should be looking? It is Win 98, I believe SE.
 
One more little trick that may help.

Boot the computer into the Motherboard BIOS.

In the PnP/PCI section where you can assign, PNP OS installed, if it says Yes change it to no, or if it says NO change to Yes. Reboot and see what takes place.

Doing so usually forces Win98 to reorganize the IRQ, and usually will detect forgotten hardware.
 
Thanks I will give that a try, What about an OS upgrade, would that do it? Not a total fresh install just an upgrade?
 
You can try to upgrade to Win XP Home, WinXP is better in organizing hardware resources then Win 98, make sure that XP drivers are available for the NIC.
 
Yeah i was thinking of putting XP on there, since I like the remote assitance thing, since we live over 2 hours apart.
 
This is not working. New NIC did not solve the problem, Changing the OS PNP setting did nothing. I can not get either the old or the new NIC to install. PNP will not recgonize them, what do I do?
 
I found the following out the hard way, and only b/c of the FAQ for my router. (I know Granny doesn have a router...read on!)

Roadrunner has some kind of weird proprietary thing where it RECORDS the MAC addy of the NIC you are using when you first logon/use their network. Here's how I found out.

1. Cable guy comes over. Gets me a signal on the cable modem. Not wanting to compromise my network, I go straight from the modem into my second rig, just to make sure I can surf. If you can surf, you are good to go b/c you have connectivity.

2. Everything works fine, great speeds, etc.

3. I disconnect the PC I used in Step 1 and plug into my router, set it up and try to surf. Nothing. Cable light is on, but can't surf.

4. Unplug from router, plug into main computer. Nothing. WTF?

5. Unplug from main computer, replug into computer from Step 1 and all is well. 2x WTF?

6. STart researching and four hours later find out that RR records the MAC addy of the NIC you used the VERY FIRST time you connected.

Luckily, my routers' setup lets you "spoof" a MAC addy of a network connected PC. I telnetted (is that a word?) into the router from the PC from Step 1, spoofed the MAC and now its up and running.

I would call RR, tell them Grannys NIC died and could they please reset your account. That's what I was going to do had the spoof-thing not worked.

I hope this helps. good luck.
 
That may come in handy if I get the new NIC installed, but I don't think it's a road runner problem. I just can't get the NICs to install. All of a suden when they started the computer one day, they had no RR. She called them and they walked her through some stuff, but found out there was no NIC mentioned in the device manager. They told her until she has a NIC installed, they can't help. The problem being is that there was a linksys NIC installed, it just wasn't showing up or working for some reason.

So I came up and gave it a once over. I switched the NIC and another PCI card which was immediately recognized, so that told me it's not a PCI slot or OS PnP problem. So then I assumed the NIC was bad. I told her to go get another one, which she did. I tried to install it and it is not recognized. As Jack MDS mentioned, it could be like a ghost adapter still in the system. But I don't know how to get rid of it. I started in safemode and noticed the linksys was still showing up in device manager there. Since it is no longer installed(she has a netgear in there now) I removed this from device manager, hoping it was the phantom adapter. I restarted in normal mode and it still did not detect. I also did what JackMDS said about resseting that part in the BIOS, only it was a littlew differant in her BIOS then what jack said. It said something about resetting the config data on boot up. I told it to do that, but it didn't seem like it did anything. I went back to the BIOS and noticed that option was off again, I switched it and nothing happened, so i checked it again and it was off. I am assuming it resets after the computer is booted so that it doesn't have to reset the data every time it restarts.

I am running out of options. I had planned today to call tech support for the netgear NIC that is installed now, but I can here them already saying that it is not a problem wiht thier NIC. Can anyone tell me where I need to look for this ghost adapter? Is there something I can reset in the registry to get rid of it?
 
There is a chance you got another bad network adapter. Can you try it in another computer to verify it actually works.

Otherwise its time to try another new network adapter.
 
How did the original just go bad though? I mean that was my guess. But do they just work fine one day then not at all the next? If it is another bad card, then when I call tech support, they should probablly offer to send me another card.
 
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