Ethernet Controller Driver missing

sumwar

So I just got a new ATi graphics card 4850 and I removed my old Nvidia graphics card and uninstalled all nvidia drivers. Somehow I accidentally uninstalled the ethernet controller driver which apparently now prevents me from using the internet which is dumb, I can't believe I need software from the internet to use the internet.

Please help me find this software. I have windows XP 32 bit. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Esh

sumwar wrote:

So I just got a new ATi graphics card 4850 and I removed my old Nvidia graphics card and uninstalled all nvidia drivers. Somehow I accidentally uninstalled the ethernet controller driver which apparently now prevents me from using the internet which is dumb, I can't believe I need software from the internet to use the internet.

Please help me find this software. I have windows XP 32 bit. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Uninstall it from Device Manager, reboot, Windows should find it and reinstall it automatically.

sumwar

uninstall what exactly? There is no ethernet controller driver installed at the moment and I can't find it online. I've rebooted several times and it can't find any software to allow me to connect to the internet.

Esh

Uninstall the device completely. You should be able to right-click on the device in Device Manager and uninstall it. When Windows reboots, it'll go "Hey, what's this piece of hardware?" and install the device and driver. It's the Ethernet on your motherboard, yes?

sumwar

Solved. Man I am still confused. So it turns out my old graphics card came with a CD that I put in, and it has the software for the Ethernet Controller. Which is weird because it's a graphics card CD, why would it be a necessity to go online? Anyway I put in the old graphics card CD and installed the Ethernet Controller and no other things(no visual stuff since I'm using a newer graphics card I just got). Man computers are weird.

Essee

Nvidia, in addition to their graphics drivers, does also have another chipset, nForce, that is part of various motherboards and... you guessed it... the ethernet on the motherboard is part of what it handles. Just thought you might like to know why that worked-- it's not totally random that an Nvidia driver was what you needed. I'm not exactly sure why the driver was on the graphics drivers CD, but maybe they placed it there for the same reason you needed to have the CD to fix this-- for people who accidentally remove it when uninstalling Nvidia's other drivers?

sumwar

Next time I buy a computer I'm considering buying each part separately. Because I bought it from someone who put it together I didn't get the graphics card/mother board CD nor did I get the OS CD which would be helpful. I'm definitely going to build my next computer so I get all the CD's from the companies.

TychoCelchuuu

The CDs are typically between worthless and worse than worthless, because they have outdated drivers on them. The only time they're useful is if you don't have access to another computer and you need the chipset and/or Ethernet driver to get online to download the rest of your drivers. In any other situation you should stay far, far away from the company-provided CD unless you have a great reason to use it instead of the website, which you probably don't.

sumwar

Yea you're right, I just now downloaded the Ethernet Controller software from Nvidia in case this happens again. Funny enough my computer crashed a long time ago and I had this same issue but instead I bought a new computer instead of figuring out I needed my Ethernet Controller software from Nvidia lol. The next time I buy a computer I will 100% make sure I have the software for the network adapter in case this happens again, no internet make me go something something haha.