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Dell laptop: Your ethernet adapter has died
scrivenerjones
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I have this new Dell XPS M1530, with Windows 7 64-bit. Everything worked great until yesterday, when I innocently allowed Windows Update to update the drivers for the ethernet card (it's a Marvell Yukon 88E8040). Now it shows all signs of being dead--no lights when the cable is plugged in, Windows tells me "Network cable unplugged" even though it's not, and so on. And so that I wouldn't feel like an idiot when someone suggested, I tested the ethernet cable and the socket on the router on a different machine, and everything on that end checks out.
The weird part (imo) is that I ran the newfangled Windows Restore, picked a restore point that was well before the fateful update... and it's still dead. I also tried deleting the driver and installing a fresh one right from Marvell's web site, to no avail. So now I'm thinking maybe the card up and died? The machine is new enough that it makes sense, although I would have expected a bum card to have died back in mid-January when I bought it.
I know, down in my soul, that this is going to end with me on the phone with some hopeless Dell customer service rep. But if you have any other ideas for me before I take that step, I would be much appreciative.
The weird part (imo) is that I ran the newfangled Windows Restore, picked a restore point that was well before the fateful update... and it's still dead. I also tried deleting the driver and installing a fresh one right from Marvell's web site, to no avail. So now I'm thinking maybe the card up and died? The machine is new enough that it makes sense, although I would have expected a bum card to have died back in mid-January when I bought it.
I know, down in my soul, that this is going to end with me on the phone with some hopeless Dell customer service rep. But if you have any other ideas for me before I take that step, I would be much appreciative.
scrivenerjones on
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It should still be under warranty, so it shouldn't be too bad for you. Best bet is to roll back the drivers, which you did try. Or if you can, try to update Windows 7 once more. Sometimes their fixes break something that then gets fixed again.
As much as this would suck, have you considered trying to roll it back to vista?
And it should be a hardware issue yes.
Is the AC adapter currently plugged in? If not, give it a shot. Boot to safe mode just for the hell of it to check, try another ethernet cable and don't forget to check Device Manager to see if your card still shows up as a detected device. If all of these come up with the same results, it's probably shot.
Cable was tested minutes ago. Guess I will try Safe Mode next before I get Dell on the horn.
After that, it the port just suddenly worked again. I hope someone can decipher what I've said into something useful. I just know that I had this exact problem and no calls to terrible Dell support or replacement parts were necessary.
People who are not quite as unhelpful as me have informed me that what I am describing is chkdsk.
chkdsk /r
sfc /scannow
Those are the most likely one's I can think of, all ran through command prompt. If the required service for your wired port isn't running due to some sort of file corruption, that could technically disable it, and that may resolve it. Worth a shot.
The mystery scan would be a check disk scan.
This basically goes through and checks the volumes (drives) for errors and can correct a lot of major problems.
Always a blast running this and having "Windows has recovered from a serious error" Flash when you boot up.
30 minutes isn't bad, I've done this on my old desk top to recover it and it took almost 5 hours.
chkdsk /r will automatically run chkdsk /f /r in its place, so the first one is redundant.
But, yes, chkdsk is the scan that likes to appear when Windows has shut down unexpectedly.
Worth a shot.
For me, it happens when I move from campus to home with a hibernate in between. To get it working again I typically have to restart my router and the laptop to get it working again. No amount of repairing or tinkering with the drivers/network options seems to work, and I have no idea why it happens other than my router doesn't always get along with everything.
Just something else to try that's simple before you get into heavy scans and such.