Lan connection issue

[rockymtnhigh]

I go to my Dell quad core desktop and notice there is no internet. Actually, Win 7 says no ethernet connection. So I reboot to see if that helps, nothing. I remove the ethernet cable from the switch, and plug it directly into the PC, nothing. I plug the eternet into my laptop (with wifi disabled of course), and the laptop gets network with no problem.

SO I go into network settings, it says the Ethernet controller is enabled. RealTek PCIe GBE familuy controller is fine. There are some Subnelt Software firewall minports that are coming up with errors, but I don't think that is the problem.

I check behind the desktop, and there is a blinking yellow light and a solid orange light (which I believe on Dell means there is activity, and it is connected at 100MB.

I tried to reinstall the driver for the RealTek PCi controller, but Win 7 says it is up to date.

Totally at a loss here. Any ideas??? Don't really want to have to go buy another ethernet card if I can avoid it.

 

[mdram]

go to dells website and get the latest driver, even if its says its up to date
if that doesnt work, go to realteks website and get a driver
if that doesnt work, remove and reseat the card
and retry the drivers:
if non of that works go get a new card

is it on the mobo or an actual card?

 

[rockymtnhigh]

go to dells website and get the latest driver, even if its says its up to date
if that doesnt work, go to realteks website and get a driver
if that doesnt work, remove and reseat the card
and retry the drivers:
if non of that works go get a new card

is it on the mobo or an actual card?

My gut says it is on the mobo. I'll have to pull the case to check.

This was working fine yesterday, and for the last two years. I'll go to Dell's Website first and try to find the driver. I also checked the BIOS, but everything checked out there - basically it said the LAN was enabled.

 

[SatinKzo]

actually based on waht you said about sunblet (vipre). My wife's pc had the same problem and uninstalling and re-installing vipre fixed it. Actually to verify, just shutdown vipre and see if connectivity comes back.

 

[mdonnelly]

Try the "Repair" utility (right click on the Local Area Connection in the toolbar). That does a "disable, then enable" on the network card. Sometimes that works.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

actually based on waht you said about sunblet (vipre). My wife's pc had the same problem and uninstalling and re-installing vipre fixed it. Actually to verify, just shutdown vipre and see if connectivity comes back.

It just came back, I installed a new driver from Dell's website (their support site is awesome, as you just plug in the service tag and it gives total detail on the machine), and all of a sudden it came back. I had not uninstalled vipre, I did disable each of the Firewall NDIS IM Filter Miniports. That did not seem to do anything.

That was very weird. It just happened out the blue. Maybe Vipre installed some upgrade or something? I don't know, but I now have an up to date network driver. Fingers crossed it will keep working!

Thanks guys!

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Try the "Repair" utility (right click on the Local Area Connection in the toolbar). That does a "disable, then enable" on the network card. Sometimes that works.

There was no Repair option; I have only seen that on wi-fi connections. Or I wasn't looking in the right place.

 

[diogen]

There are some Subnelt Software firewall minports that are coming up with errors, but I don't think that is the problem.

I think that is the problem...

Maybe this Trojan-Downloader.Win32.Femad (Sunbelt Software).

Diogen.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

I think that is the problem...

Diogen.

Starting to think that even if I didn't reinstall the driver, if I had rebooted after disabling those miniports, the network would have come back. I'll check out Sunbelt's site for any details abotu the firewall.

 

[diogen]

A good firewall will (and should) lock up the interface it is attached to when tampered with.
The fact there are errors in Device Manager on the NDIS filters is suspicion enough...

Diogen.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

A good firewall will (and should) lock up the interface it is attached to when tampered with.
The fact there are errors in Device Manager on the NDIS filters is suspicion enough...

Diogen.

Hmm.... I'll run diagnostics to see what is going on, if anything. The machine seems to be stable. I tend to be a pretty safe surfer as well.

 

[diogen]

Why do you run a third party firewall on Win7, exactly?

Diogen.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

I think it came with the anti-virus software; and to be honest I thought it wasn't running.

I also just remembered that when I turned on the machine this morning- it would not come out of sleep - and had actually powered down. And when I hit the power button, it started with the safe mode screen. Apparently there was a blues screen. I am thinking its possible that SUnbelt installed an update and somehow the machine took a dive? Not sure.

Spybot Search and Destroy is running right now, and Vipre did a scan. I'll see what it finds....

 

[SatinKzo]

My wife's system, it locked up after a vipre update ran and the mini-ports were errored out. I run vipre myself, but just the anti-virus, not the firewall. I use win7's firewall, like you, I don't know why my wife's vipre firewall was enabled and win7 disabled.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

My wife's system, it locked up after a vipre update ran and the mini-ports were errored out. I run vipre myself, but just the anti-virus, not the firewall. I use win7's firewall, like you, I don't know why my wife's vipre firewall was enabled and win7 disabled.

I think the vipre update is what did my system in. I ran spybot and Vipre and the machine came up clean. I just kept the firewall disabled. I don't need it anyways. Still not sure how it was on in the first place. But maybe I just didn't realize it went on when I upgraded Vipre.

 

[Foxbat]

Rocky, my son's Dell had a similar problem under XP Home. It turns out something he ran across had installed a proxy process and modified his browser to send all his IE traffic through the proxy. Of course, once the malware was old enough for AV to get a definition that included it, the proxy process and executable were deleted. However, IE now timed out on everything because his proxy was "localhost:51435" which did not respond.

Also, I just read a step-by-step reverse engineering analysis of the Zero Access rootkit which has been engineered to survive formatting of the infected OS partition! If you get hit with, I think it's time to upgrade your system disk to something with more room and schedule the old drive for a thorough de-lousing on a non-Windows OS. The Black Hats are real b@star@ds some times...

Diogen, you know your way around the IT universe, what do you use when you need to guarantee any attached storage on a PC has been cleaned? I know there are CD-bootable mini-OSes that can be used, but do you have a favorite?

 

[diogen]

Not really.

The worst that happened to me over the years was the Sony rootkit and QuickTax MBR tampering.
The only way some malicious code can survive reformatting is if it can hide a partition from the formatter.
For a long time to clean a drive I'd plug it into an older WD NAS with customized firmware.

Today I use a bootable 512MB SD card (always plugged in) with Puppy Linux on Dell Lat 2100.
The primary reason is not as much hard drive cleanup as it is hard drive content recovery.
Puppy has the most disk tools in the least space from all other Linux live distros I know.

Dell Lat 2100 was chosen because a)the SD card is completely hidden; and b)it allows boot from SD (unlike Inspirons).


Diogen.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

The machine seems to be fine, with no signs of any malware, and everything is functioning optimally I believe. Nothing strange is happening, and I have successfully been de-DRM'ing some itunes video clips and it all seems to be working fine. Fingers crossed this was just a screwup by Sunbelt.

 

[Foxbat]

Today I use a bootable 512MB SD card (always plugged in) with Puppy Linux on Dell Lat 2100.
The primary reason is not as much hard drive cleanup as it is hard drive content recovery.
Puppy has the most disk tools in the least space from all other Linux live distros I know.

Dell Lat 2100 was chosen because a)the SD card is completely hidden; and b)it allows boot from SD (unlike Inspirons).


Diogen.

I've used the Knoppix bootable CD to look at systems without touching the hard drive, but I'll give Puppy a try. I have an old Wintergreen Minibook system that can't support more than 256 MB of RAM. Puppy sounds perfect for it. I could never get Knoppix to run an AV scanner, but it sounds like that isn't an issue with Puppy. Thanks!

Rocky, glad to hear your PC is acting happy now.

 

[rockymtnhigh]

Ok, strange problem.... I was sitting on my laptop merrily cruising the internet when my wife complains that her internet (wired on a desktop machine) is down. And sure enough, it is. But wifi was fine. I checked my desktop, no internet. I go to the router and reboot the modem and then the router. Nothing. Nada.

I reboot both machines, says it is connected, but no internet. I can connect to 192.168.2.1 (the router) from the desktop, but nothing else. Why would the wired ports of the Router not see the DNS servers, but the wifi connection does? On a whim I looked up the google public dns servers, and on my desktop I went into internet protocol properties and changed automatically detect DNS to use the google 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 settings. Bingo. Internet works.

So... any idea what is going on? Is there a problem with the belkin router?

Now to make me go even more insane, on the laptop, I can not find 192.168.2.1??? Grrr...