Ethernet Trouble (Mac)

Kusuguttai

I seem to be having some sort of ethernet connection problem in my dorm room. The funny thing is, when I first arrived, the LAN T3 connection worked just fine on my Macbook. However, I returned from a trip home on the weekend around a month ago, and found that my computer would not recognize my ethernet cable anymore–i tested to see if it was just the cable, and, no, it's not. No matter what, it refuses to work for me. I know it's not the connection in the room, because my room mates PC works just fine when plugged into the network. I've tried everything I could think of–running diagnostics (nothing came back) and I even copied the IP, Subnet Mask and default router addresses he was connected too, and still nothing.
Does anyone know what's going on?

Feral

Do you have a different Ethernet port you can try, maybe in a different room?

Kusuguttai

Well, like I said, the port works just fine for everyone else, it's just me. Which makes me even more frustrated. I can't try another port at the moment, but I'll for sure do it tomorrow. The thing is, it's not registering that there is even a cable in the ethernet port.

Feral

Kusuguttai wrote:

Well, like I said, the port works just fine for everyone else, it's just me.

It could be your network card.
Also, does your college require you to register your specific computer on their network? I've visited at least one university that does (Yale) and if you tried to connect it using a different computer, you'd get a similar situation (it would appear as though your network cable was not plugged in at all).

Kusuguttai

Feral wrote:

Kusuguttai wrote:

Well, like I said, the port works just fine for everyone else, it's just me.

It could be your network card.
Also, does your college require you to register your specific computer on their network? I've visited at least one university that does (Yale) and if you tried to connect it using a different computer, you'd get a similar situation (it would appear as though your network cable was not plugged in at all).

Hmm, that might make sense...I'll go down to ITT tomorrow and see if that's what needs to be done. It also sort of doesn't make sense though, because it was working fine until about a month ago.

is there a way to run a diagnostic on my network card?

mcc

When you go into the System Preferences, into the Network pane. What does it say? It will probably say something like "Network status" and then it will say something like "The cable for Built-in Ethernet is connected, but your computer does not have an IP address and cannot connect to the internet" or "The cable for Built-in Ethernet is not connected" or something. What does it say there?

Other than that you can get more diagnostic information by going to Applications->Utilities->System Profiler, but it probably won't help much.

Kusuguttai

it says its not connected.

mcc

It says there's no cable at all?

Well, is there some way you can plug the macbook into something else, anything at all, to see if it recognizes the connection?

Like, I don't know, get a crossover cable or something and plug directly into the PC.

It's increasingly sounding like something just got loose, your ethernet card don't work no mores and you need to contact Apple tech support or something.

Apple does have these online help boards but you're probably better off just calling.

Kusuguttai

mcc wrote:

It says there's no cable at all?

Well, is there some way you can plug the macbook into something else, anything at all, to see if it recognizes the connection?

Like, I don't know, get a crossover cable or something and plug directly into the PC.

It's increasingly sounding like something just got loose, your ethernet card don't work no mores and you need to contact Apple tech support or something.

Apple does have these online help boards but you're probably better off just calling.

alright cool. I'll call this weekend, I can get by on the shitty wireless till then unless someone else figures out whats wrong

mcc

Given, I don't know for sure if Apple does phone tech support anymore, but if they don't let you even call and say "MY ETHERNET CARD IT BROKE" then that's really shitty of them.