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A friend donated a computer to our church and completely re-installed windows and formatted the hard drives and such.

Installed all the drivers that they originally had been given from dell (maybe that's the first problem.. dell)

Under device manager it says the network adapter is working correctly. (Cable is plugged directly into motherboard)

I can't use ipconfig because the cable is "unplugged".

There is no green LED lit up in the back, I've tested the cable on my laptop and other computers and it works correctly. (I can connect to the internet)

Any ideas? I realize the network card might be bad but is there anything else I can try?

(Also, if this is the wrong website for this question let me know and i'll gladly remove it)

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    Are you sure there isn't multiple NICs? Also when you say your laptop works with this cable do you mean it works with the same setup (IE Switchport/physical location).?
    – Supercereal
    Dec 14, 2011 at 21:15
  • Is the network port integrated into the motherboard or a separate NIC card?
    – Ryan Clarke
    Dec 14, 2011 at 21:15
  • Wow good questions, the cable works with the same setup, i'm just moving it from the back of the desktop to my laptop. I believe it's a separate NIC. I'll check.
    – sirmdawg
    Dec 14, 2011 at 21:25
  • UPDATE: It's not a separate NIC, cable goes right into the motherboard.
    – sirmdawg
    Dec 14, 2011 at 21:29
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    Then it's dead regardless of how it's reading in Dev Man. Go grab you a PCI adapter and slap it in there (I recommend an Intel Pro100 or some variant) and give her a shot. Your onboard NIC is fried bub.
    – OG Chuck Low
    Dec 14, 2011 at 21:33

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If all of the correct, original drivers are installed and the card is still not working on the Dell (Dude! You got a Dell!) it's safe to assume that the onboard NIC is dead. It's possible that, while the NIC hardware if functional, the connector on the board is damaged such that it is not connecting properly.

Save yourself the trouble and get new NIC. They can be had for pretty cheap these days.

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  • Will most likely end up doing that. I wish this wasn't the case. Thanks!
    – sirmdawg
    Dec 15, 2011 at 15:20

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