No "installed network adapters... drivers may not have been installed."

I posted here because I'm hoping it's a driver issue...

So I can’t connect to the internet, directly or via a router, and my machine is saying I don’t have any installed network adapters when I ran the little diagnostic. “The required network device drivers may not have been installed.” I am always “connected” even if I physically unplug the cable.

This came about when I was installing a second video card for SLI mode, and after I did that, I uninstalled the old video drivers, and re-installed them so I could enable SLI.

After I re-installed both video cards, Windows did it’s “New Hardware!” crap and mentioned the VGA video card, a PCI-E slot and an SM BUS. I’ve no real idea what a SM Bus is, but I’m looking into it.

I could’ve been retarded and screwed up the internet connection using the internet connection wizard, BUT it was non-functional before that, and the internet worked fine before I installed the video cards. My roommate's connection is fine.

I haven’t tried looking for drivers using the Windows XP CD, because I didn’t have one on hand, though I can probably get my hands on one, and hopefully I can find the network drivers there?

Anyhow, thanks for any help.

If it matters my motherboard is a Gigabyte K8 Triton nForce 4 SLI.

 

Mmm, evidently the Gigabyte onboard NIC can be unstable?

 

is the NIC enabled in the BIOS ?[ot]my onboard NIC works fine on my Gigabyte mobo[/ot]

 

Whats showing in the Device Manager? Can you see any yellow question marks next to the devices?

 

Also check in Control Panel > Network Connections, if your connection is enabled or not hah:
[ot]I mean if you can see that connection over there...Just Right Click on it and enable it if its disabled[/ot]

 

How do you check to see if the NIC is enabled in the BIOS? I'll look that up online...


My onboard NIC worked fine for 6 months, the network connection failed after the installation of the 2nd video card.


The only yellow question marks are for a PCI-E slot, and an SM Bus, though the Network Adapter is working... I uninstalled it, and then rebooted, so it reinstalled itself, but that didn't help.

And yes, it is enabled, I've tried disabling it then re-enabling it, to no avail.

 

Evidently uninstalling nVidia drivers with a nVidia? motherboard (well, it was a Gigabyte SLI capable motherboard) can uninstall the network drivers as well. Yay.

 

Am I right in assuming you accidently removed the nVidia nForce chipset drivers, thinking they were the graphic card drivers?