VIA Rhine II Fast Ethernet Adapter

[taybull76]

VIA Rhine II Fast Ethernet Adapter  is not working, i just installed xp and the operating system sees it, but it says limited or no connectivity.   the adapter is on my motherboard.  I cant install any drivers for it, i tried from the cd that came with the board, the latest from the website and the ones from windows. 

[patio]

Is this an onboard NIC or a PCI network card ? ?
A new card is relatively inexpensive as you could diagnose this for days with no results...

[taybull76]

its onboard, and i dont really have space for a pci,  so any help to get this new motherboard port working would be great.

[patio]

Control Panel/System/Hardware/Device Manager...find the Rhine listing, right clik it and select remove...ignore the warning.
Re-boot and Windows will detect the hardware and prompt you for the driver...

[taybull76]

whenever i try to remove it the device manager freezes and doesnt complete the removal. 

[patio]

Try it in safemode...enter safemode by hitting F8 repeatedly as the machine is starting and before you see the Windows logo.

[taybull76]

safe mode worked better, but still the port doesnt work.  however i was able to remove the device and reinstall in safe mode.  Any thing else i could try?

[patio]

It's very possible the onboard NIC has failed...

Why do you not have any available PCI slots ? ?

[2k_dummy]

Sometimes taking a backward approach will work. Remove from device manager, remove the driver. Shutdown (not restart). Reboot to safe mode. Install the driver. Reboot again in normal mode.