Strange network card problem

O

orrymr

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Like the title suggests, I've got quite a strange problem here.
I bought a new network adapter, and it was working fine up until today. First what happened was that I couldn't connect to the internet. I decided to restart and hopefully the problem would "just disappear". Well it didn't. Instead what happened was that the screen wouldn't receive any signal and would just stay black. Nothing appeared. I restarted a couple of times, and the problem persisted. I removed the network adapter, and, the screen problem went away. I decided to reinsert the card, albeit this time into a different slot. My guess was that the original slot had gone bad. Well, it didn't. Even when I plugged the card into the new slot, I had nothing on screen when I booted up. I looked around in the BIOS, and discovered that the on-board network card (which doesn't exist) was enabled. So I disabled it. Problem still persists.

My guess is that there is some sort of conflict, but I have no idea how to resolve this. I'm running a 3ghz core2duo system, dual booting win7 and Ubuntu. Any ideas? I'm lost :confused:
 
did you shock the card with static?

For how long did the card work?

Have you tried uninstalling all network drivers & only installing the appropriate ones?
 
Take a soft white eraser and gently rub across the contacts on both sides of the card and then try again. This makes the contacts all nice and shiny and removes any oxidation without damaging the card.

Been using this technique for the past 20 years and many times I have managed to get unstable RAM and cards to behave themselves. Works especially well with laptop RAM. Just revived a laptop that HP said was irreparable.
 
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It's still new. Take it back a for a swop out, if after they test it and find it faulty.
 
I've had the strangest things with network cards in particular, where they would just disappear - including my onboard one with my Asus P7H55D-M Evo motherboard. I've tried resetting the BIOS, disable/enable the network card in the BIOS, but none of the settings made any difference. I think switching off the power at the power supply was the fix in my case.

Like I've also had it in one case where a student brought in his PC to be registered on the residential network, but then Windows didn't pick up his onboard network card any more. I then installed another PCI network card in his PC, and then suddenly the onboard one made its appearance again. So I ended up removing the PCI network card, and the onboard one remained visible.
 
Thanks for the replies.
I tried the eraser technique; no luck :/ (I don't think it could have oxidized much or accumulated much dust, given that it's a relatively new card).
The card itself worked for about 2-3 weeks before this problem. I don't recall shocking it with static.
I've tried re-seating the card multiple times, and in different slots, also, no luck there. My motherboard is roughly 3 years old. I don't see any swollen capacitors there, but I'll have another look now.

So, I've set up GRUB (the linux bootloader) to automatically boot up linux in 7 seconds unless there is user intervention. The login screen is accompanied by a short jingle. If I boot up my machine, and leave it, this jingle will play. I put the card back in, set the volume quite high and booted up again. I waited for a while, but the jingle never played. So, not only is the monitor not showing anything, but it looks like the computer isn't actually doing anything. I mean, it's running, but it's just sitting there. I guess that means that POST is failing...? It seems like that would mean the card is causing the machine to fail POST
 
Do you have ADSL?
If so was there a storm shortly before the card gave problems?

Why did you get the network card in the first place?
 
orrymr said:
Like the title suggests, I've got quite a strange problem here.
I bought a new network adapter, and it was working fine up until today. First what happened was that I couldn't connect to the internet. I decided to restart and hopefully the problem would "just disappear". Well it didn't. Instead what happened was that the screen wouldn't receive any signal and would just stay black. Nothing appeared. I restarted a couple of times, and the problem persisted. I removed the network adapter, and, the screen problem went away. I decided to reinsert the card, albeit this time into a different slot. My guess was that the original slot had gone bad. Well, it didn't. Even when I plugged the card into the new slot, I had nothing on screen when I booted up. I looked around in the BIOS, and discovered that the on-board network card (which doesn't exist) was enabled. So I disabled it. Problem still persists.

My guess is that there is some sort of conflict but I have no idea how to resolve this. I'm running a 3ghz core2duo system, dual booting win7 and Ubuntu. Any ideas? I'm lost :confused:
Click to expand...

Screen won't be disabled even if there's a conflict, as those are mostly logical. Replace the card, never mess with bad hardware in your system, you can do more damage.
 
Lightning did zap my original card.
Guess I'll just have to get a new one (they're not too pricey these days, thankfully).
I just find it odd that it was working fine, then all of a sudden, it just stopped. I was working on my Windows 7 partition, when all of a sudden I couldn't connect to the internet or my home network anymore. Everything else was working fine; it's as soon as I rebooted that I noticed the screen thing.

Thanks for the help guys :)
 
Be on the lookout for latent damage though.

Had it a couple of times.

Lightning would zap a PC. Replace network card, everything's 100%. But later on strange anomalies would become apparent.

Like PC resetting itself all of a sudden, or just bluescreening. Or doing funny things which it never did before.

Or you might be lucky and dodge that bullet.
 
I have had the weirdest network problems under Windows 7. Take your NIC and go and plug it into a machine with Windows XP on it. This will soon show if the card is the problem.
 
The_Librarian said:
Be on the lookout for latent damage though.

Had it a couple of times.

Lightning would zap a PC. Replace network card, everything's 100%. But later on strange anomalies would become apparent.

Like PC resetting itself all of a sudden, or just bluescreening. Or doing funny things which it never did before.

Or you might be lucky and dodge that bullet.
Click to expand...
What he said.

I would suggest replacing your MB or take your board to someone that can remove the networking chip. (have seen that done a few times). Maybe you're lucky & the rest of the board is fine.
 
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