Help! Never seen This Before!

A week ago, I had a power outage in the middle of the night. My PC is plugged into a surge protector, the cable modem is as well, but I do not have coax protection on my surge protector. When I started my computer the next morning, I could not connect to the internet. I receive a local unidentified network connection, a local IP 169.254.xxx.xxx, and my physical address of my network card is 0's. My computer will not seem to release the locally config'd IP address, I have done numerous restarts of both modem and PC, ip renew's, etc.

I plugged my cable modem into my laptop, and it connected to the internet first try! I dusted off my old desktop, and it worked too! Easy enough right? NIC on my MOBO is shot. Read on...

Took my PC to Best Buy to ship for warranty repair of my NIC. Received a phone call that same day, telling me nothing was wrong with my PC. Went to get it and they brought it up for me. Good IP address, instead of unidentified network I had network connection 6 or something, and my NIC had a physical address.

I brought the PC back home, and the same thing was happening as before- no internet! I sat on the phone with road runner's "amazing" 3-tier tech support, in which they made me do the same things I'd been doing already, and chalked it up to the PC. The modem tests fine on their side, and it works on other PC's.

I called Best Buy and told him the results, and he was completely stumped. He said it was not the PC, it worked fine for them.

The only other thing I can think to do is swap my modem at Time Warner, if that does not work, I will have to buy a PCI network adapter, which if it does work will slow down my connection speed(I dabble in online gaming)

I have updated/reinstalled drivers for my NIC, changed out 3 different CAT-5 cables, ran system restore, all to no avail. I am plugging directly into cable modem, which goes directly into the wall. My PC is Vista, laptop and old PC are XP. If anyone has EVER seen this type of problem before or has any other suggestions, please help! I will post my specs below.

Thanks in advance,

Stretch


Acer Aspire E380-UD440A

AMD 64 Athalon X2 4400+
2 GB DDR2 Memory
320GB HDD
512MB PCI-Ex Video
Enermax 550W ps
Windows Vista Home
Generic Marvell Yukon Ethernet Gigabit controller

I receive a local unidentified network connection, a local IP 169.254.xxx.xxx, and my physical address of my network card is 0's.

Looks like you have an Automatic Private IP Address (APIPA).  Your local computer assigns itself an address in this range when the TCP/IP Properties of your LAN connection are set to "Obtain IP address Automatically" and it is unable to access a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server to get an IP address.

Check to ensure your Vista firewall is not blocking the DHCP protocol.

You might look at Microsoft Vista Home Networking Setup and Options; possibly the subsections "Managing Your Network Settings" and "Network Location Choices".  Since I'm not familiar with Vista, there's not much more I can say.

Update-
Swapped out cable modem, power cord, and Cat-5 today from cable company. No joy, other computers still get on the internet fine. I am friggin stumped. Gotta be my PC, but it worked on best buy's internet connection, I just don't get it.

have you tried a different WNIC? The one you have works at bestbuy, yes- just get a cheap one, however- then you can confirm wether it is the WNIC or not. But first, you might want to try moving the net card to a different slot. I don't know how it would work, but it could be possible that the WNIC recieved a large burst of radio input right as the power went out froma surge going into the modem.

steps:


New WNIC

new Motherboard

(don't know what the motherboard would have to do with it, but there u are....

My, how great minds think alike. However, you are slightly off-track. I am using a wired connection. My NIC is on the mobo itself. I just returned from best buy with a PCI NIC, it'll tell me if my MOBO adapter has crapped out or not, but I don't want to leave it in my PC, because a PCI internet connection is not as fast as an onboard one. Time Warner is hosing me with my internet speeds as it is.

I will post the results in about 15 minutes.

well folks, results are in. My onboard NIC is for some reason not working with my modem. I am online right now using a PCI adapter card. Never seen anything like this, well I guess it's on to Acer to try and get a new mobo...

My, how great minds think alike. However, you are slightly off-track. I am using a wired connection. My NIC is on the mobo itself. I just returned from best buy with a PCI NIC, it'll tell me if my MOBO adapter has crapped out or not, but I don't want to leave it in my PC, because a PCI internet connection is not as fast as an onboard one. Time Warner is hosing me with my internet speeds as it is.

I will post the results in about 15 minutes.

oh umm... *cough* yeah, I knew that *cough*. I was using WNIC to represent erm- a WEAL, or real NIC. yeah, thats what it was.

well folks, results are in. My onboard NIC is for some reason not working with my modem. I am online right now using a PCI adapter card. Never seen anything like this, well I guess it's on to Acer to try and get a new mobo...

Strange that it worked at bestbuy- maybe they only used a slower speed, say, and the logic circuits for the faster speeds got fried... Also, where the heck did I get this wireless idea from? Lack of sleep I'm sure.

also:

but I don't want to leave it in my PC, because a PCI internet connection is not as fast as an onboard one.

where did you learn this?

That doesn't make any sense- the onboard NIC is still a PCI device, just integrated right onto the motherboard. It doesn't get to take any "shortcuts". By that logic a Intel integrated graphics should be faster then a GeForce or Radeon, and on-board sound better then a X-Fi....

I'm not sure why it worked at best buy. I know they go through a router, so maybe you're right about that. Maybe I'll try and manually lower the speeds on my onboard NIC and see if that does anything.

I am sure I read somewhere that the PCI adapter is slightly slower than on-board of the same caliber. Not sure about the graphics theory, I had a crap on-board and switched to my 512 radeon.

I just know that I want to try and get Acer to fix my onboard. I do not want to keep the PCI adapter, My case is full enough as it is, and this thing is still under warranty.

Thanks for all the help!

try changing the cat 5 cable between your computer and the modem.

and the on board NICs run as fast as a "PCI" NIC.

Yep, already tried that, no joy. I did notice that my NIC is a gigabit ethernet adapter, and the PCI one I bought is a 10/100. Could it maybe be a speed thing? Like Best Buy's router connection is working at a lower speed than my at-home modem?

Yep, already tried that, no joy. I did notice that my NIC is a gigabit ethernet adapter, and the PCI one I bought is a 10/100. Could it maybe be a speed thing? Like Best Buy's router connection is working at a lower speed than my at-home modem?

In that case, the PCI one you purchased was slower then the  Gigabit NIC on-board (10/100/1000, i believe). It is possible that the NIC still accepted 1000 as a negotiable speed with the router, but the logic circuits (a resistor, a diode, who knows) fail to properly transfer data to or from at that speed. Of course since the motherboard NIC can't do 1000 properly anymore (possibly), then you aren't gaining much over the mobo as it is. If Best-buy is using a gigabit-connection, however, the mystery becomes more- err, mysterious...

Of course I'd got for a replacement especially if still under warranty from Acer- If you are really desperate you could get a 10/100/1000 NIC, but I'm not sure how expensive those would be. Besides you want a free slot (always good to have ) and I'm sure it feels silly installing a PCI adapter that goes slower then the on-board version.

If you can manage to manually lower the speed of the NIC (probably in "Peripheral configuration" or something similiar in the BIOS), and it works properly, then I might actually not be saying random stuff when I say the gigabit-logic circuits are damaged. On the other hand, it might be the router or modem that aren't able to handle that speed. If it is the router that got damaged, then you'd be able to connect at 1000 by connecting straight to the modem (I believe you have tried that already) and you've changed the modem, so that isn't it either.

Obviously something along the line got damaged from the power outage, and all signs now seem to point to the onboard-NIC.

The 2 speeds are a reason that this isn't working.

Open the proprites to the NIC and look for Configure button. Look for the advanced tab and than media type. In most cases it will be set to auto but change it to 100 full duplex.

 

it was his old gigabit built-in NIC that wasn't working- he got it working with a PCI NIC 10/100...

Although getting the motherboard NIC working with a slower speed would save stretch a slot.

Ok, tried what you said. A few times. With all my speed options. Could not get the On-board NIC to work. Doesn't work with 10 or 100, half or full.

Many would say who cares? the NIC you bought works. Well, I have 3 more days to return that card and save myself $30, I would like that slot free in my case(the computer room gets pretty toasty in the summer), and I'm just pissed that I can't get it to work!

any other ideas? Please?

were you changing the settings through windows or directly in the CMOS setup? Try them both for the sake of completion. Also although for obvious reasons you didn't want to shop around for the PCI NIC, 30$ for a 10/100 is kind of high. I got one for 14$ recently.


And another thing that is annoying if you end up using the PCI NIC is it feels kind of like a redundancy, since the motherboard already has one.

Can't really think of anything to add, but maybe I will if I sum up all the info you've given us at once:

onboard gigabit NIC won't work after a power outage. works at a local Bestbuy location.

NIC won't work at any speed designated.




One last thing you could try- Uninstall and reinstall the drivers for the internal NIC. might not help, but it surely couldn't hurt, since it doesn't seem to work anymore anyway...


On the other hand, it works fine at bestbuy. You could ask them about the configuration they have at their location.

I was changing the settings in the configuration tab of the NIC in device manager. I would do a hard reboot, reset my modem, then start everything back up each time.

The PCI was somewhere around $25 at best buy, their cheapest. Luckily I had $20 gift card so only had to pay $5. but that gift card was going to go to a new mouse.

Reinstalling drivers was like the first or second thing I tried- no help there.

Not sure about best buy's network, all I know is that they have it all through a router.