... I don't mean ha-ha funny. Some of the puns it's using are terrible! But also! I had to reinstall Windows XP a while ago, after changing graphics card to a Radeon Sapphire 3850. After reinstalling that, and all the drivers for the mother board and stuff (an ATI...will have to wait till later when I get home to give full model), I found that the built-in network card wasn't working. Tried another reinstall of Windows and the drivers. But no luck. It didn't even see the card in the device manager, it's as if it wasn't there. So I decided to hell with it, and bought another network card - a Belkin something or other (again will put full make model later), a cheapie for €15. I installed it and when I went into the device manager, the new network card was showing up as the old one! In other words, I now see "ATI Onboard Network Adapter (or whatever it says, I'll correct this)" in the device manager after putting in the Belkin one. But when I disable it, the green light on the Belkin one goes off! I tried plugging the network cable into the Belkin anyway (thinking it might work just have the wrong name), but didn't work. Anyone know what could be going on here? The other onboard stuff on the motherboard is fine (i.e. sound-card!) Thanks!
Check your BIOS settings. I know a windows reinstall doesn't touch the BIOS but its worth checking if windows doesnt recognise your onboard lan card.
Thanks for the suggestions... I couldn't find anything to do with network cards in the BIOS, but there was a second serial port which was disabled. I enabled this, and for some reason now the onboard one works!
