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Laptop nic

FIXED
penfold
Aspiring Pro
Posts: 2,280
Thanks: 25
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Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Laptop nic

Things have seemed OK, since my upgrade woes..... until today, when I tried configuring a new router, for my dad. I switched off wireless on the laptop, and connected a cable from the laptop to Router.  I got a yellow exclamation mark over the internet icon, but wasnt bothered as the router wasnt connected to the internet.  Try as I might, the laptop refused to connect to the router setup pages.  After a couple of reboots, and still nothing, I noted the laptop was getting a 169. address. Tried manually renewing the IP, to no avail.  Tried a static IP, on the same IP range and subnet, still nothing.

I then noticed the Laptop NIC had a MAC address of 00 00 00 00 00 00.  Looked at the wireless MAC and that seemed fine.

i have uninstalled the Laptop NIC drivers, and reinstalled, and also installed updated drivers from the manufacturers website, still nothing.

The NIC is a Realtek PCIe FE.  Device manager states the device is working fine, but I still cant access anything via the wired ethernet on the laptop. Wireless is fine.

I have tried winsock fixes etc, but nothing seems to work.  Has the built in NIC failed???  If so why would device manager state its working fine?

I would welcome any advice you could give, as I have no other ideas...

7 REPLIES 7
Baldrick1
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Re: Laptop nic

Try opening the command prompt by typing cmd into the search field at the bottom left hand corner of the windows desktop. Select run as administrator. A window should open with white characters on a black background.

In the window that opens type: ipconfig /release

When that has been actioned type: ipconfig /renew

That might sort it out.

 

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penfold
Aspiring Pro
Posts: 2,280
Thanks: 25
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Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: Laptop nic

Tried that, the system tells me that it cannot release ip addresses. Ip is still in the 169 range that Windows uses when it can't connect to a dhcp server. I am more thinking this is a hardware fault. When I had my upgrade issues, I also needed to reinstate the laptop serial number into the bios using this method.
http://14phoenix.blogspot.com/2013/07/fix-missing-serialproduct-numbers-for.html?m=1
I wonder if a corrupt bios could cause this....
VileReynard
Hero
Posts: 12,616
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Registered: ‎01-09-2007

Re: Laptop nic

If your BIOS was corrupt, it seems unlikely that you could boot the OS.

Is the ethernet cable 'good' - do the green LEDs light-up on when you plug it into any sockets which have the LED feature?

You might have to fall back on a plugin USB ethernet dongle - but these are an inferior solution.

BTW Can you ping 127.0.0.1 even when it shows it is broken - this should always work.

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

penfold
Aspiring Pro
Posts: 2,280
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Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: Laptop nic


@VileReynard wrote:

If your BIOS was corrupt, it seems unlikely that you could boot the OS.

Is the ethernet cable 'good' - do the green LEDs light-up on when you plug it into any sockets which have the LED feature?

Yeah agree, but I just wondered if some of the BIOS was corrupt. Windows boots fine, and device manager shows no issues.  The cable is good, as the NIC detects that something is connected, I just get unknown network. Whenever I tried to browse to the router IP, I got IP Address unreachable.  This is with the router I was trying to setup, and I also tried with my own as well.  Wireless works fine when trying to connect to my own router.

I can spoof the MAC address in device manager, and it accepts a different one OK, but i am stumped as to what has happened to the original one.

Happy to use wireless on my laptop, but I can be a little obsessive, as I like to know why things are not working 🙂 


 Moderator's note by Dick (Strat): Quote fixed.

VileReynard
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Posts: 12,616
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Re: Laptop nic

That explains it.

Proper ethernet cards come with a "proper" burned in MAC address which is unique.

Maybe it got zeroised during previous attempts to do your upgrade?

It's quite OK to choose to spoof this - especially as its only a local address - Plusnet will still see the WAN address that was allocated to you.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_spoofing

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

penfold
Aspiring Pro
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Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: Laptop nic

That's very possible... I will have to look at all the macs on my network and make sure I don't mess up although given the number of iterations I can't see how I would randomly pick one I already have......
penfold
Aspiring Pro
Posts: 2,280
Thanks: 25
Fixes: 5
Registered: ‎01-08-2007

Re: Laptop nic

Fix

Gave it another Mac address via device manager, and all ok now. One can only wonder why it's original one git zeroed out. Maybe using the software fix to repair the 'no serial number found' issue caused it. I doubt a BIOS reflash would help if it's been zeroed out, and to be honest, eventually this laptop now appears to be running fine, so if it ain't broke don't fix it😂😂

Thanks to all for the help.