Bad NIC card?

I can't get my daughter's Dell to connect to the internet all of a sudden. Of course, I was muckin' around with it and cleaning and defragging it...dumb mom! (God forbid she can't IM anyone) I'm getting a Page Won't Display error when going into IE, and logging onto IM just sits there. OpenBand said I may have a bad NIC card, or I've accidentally dumped a driver. Her computer's such a mess, which made me go in and clean it up in the first place. (I know just enough to be dangerous.) How can I tell if it's a bad NIC card? All the drivers seem to be in place, but I'm not technically savvy to really know if I dumped the driver or not. Any thing I can do before I completely flatline the darn thing, or find the first window to drop it from?[xx(]

 

First thing to try is ping the NIC
Open a dos or command prompt window. Type
ping 127.0.0.1
If you get a reply that means your NIC is working and responding. That doesn't rule out a corrupt driver but it's where I would start.
What operating system are you using? Windows XP home? XP pro? Windows 2000? etc.

 

A few questions ...

Did this just start, or after you 'cleaned' the machine? BTW .. what version of Windows is it?? Are all the other machines in the house connecting OK ?

If the suggested Ping test works, try to remove the NIC using the Hardware Manager. Just delete it and reboot, the system should then find it and reinstall it.

Lastly, it could be that some spy/ad/malware has taken over the system and is blocking the system. I've seen this happen with some customers of mine, and prompt use of Ad-Ware and Spybot-Search and Destroy is called for. I use both, as one finds things the other doesn't.





Neil Z.
Resident since 1999

 

If the computer has Windows XP you can try checking for bad disk sectors. At first I thought bad disk sectors had nothing to do with accessing the net, but IE and other applications write cache data and internet temp files to the disk. If this area on the disk has bad sectors or has been damaged, the application will fail to perform properly.

To do this under Windows XP:
Right-mouse click on the primary hard drive drive from My Computer. Select Properties and then click on the Tools tab. Select Check Now... under Error checking. Choose Automatically fix system errors and Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors. Then click Start.

It will then restart Windows and run the check disk utility and fix any bad disk sectors.

Another thing you can try is look at the event viewer under Control Panel, Administrative Tools. Sometimes errors will show up there that can help diagnose the problem.

Good luck!

 

And if all else fails:

SHAMELESS PLUG WARNING:

Call your Personal Techie 703-723-1862 !!

[)]

Neil Z.
Resident since 1999

 

It's Windows Millenium (ME)...