Lost NIC card in XP-Home

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Guest

I have XP-Home installed on an older Dell computer. It has been working fine
for some time.

However, recently the NIC in network settings has just disappeared.

The 3COM NIC shows in device manager, and if I uninstall the NIC, XP finds
and reinstalls it but when looking at Network Settings it is not there.

I have lost my Verizon DSL access. If I go to reinstall the Verizon
software, it says there must be a NIC installed.

Is there any fix for this ?

Thanks.
 
Hmm,

Did this disapperance coincide with an update to SP2 by any chance?

I have read about many problems with network controllers and SP2. Some
people have managed to solve similar problems by older drivers for the card.
 
Miazelli said:
I have XP-Home installed on an older Dell computer. It has been
working fine for some time.

However, recently the NIC in network settings has just disappeared.

The 3COM NIC shows in device manager, and if I uninstall the NIC, XP
finds and reinstalls it but when looking at Network Settings it is not
there.

I have lost my Verizon DSL access. If I go to reinstall the Verizon
software, it says there must be a NIC installed.

Is there any fix for this ?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Just replace the NIC. It is probably failing. A new NIC will cost around
$10-15usd. Uninstall the old one and install the new one.

Malke
 
Thank you both. SR-2 was installed but the problem preceeded this. I
uninstalled SR-2 anyway as I know it does cause problems on older machines.

I will try a new card - I have a few spares - I will post if this fixes the
problem.
 
Miazelli said:
Thank you both. SR-2 was installed but the problem preceeded this. I
uninstalled SR-2 anyway as I know it does cause problems on older
machines.

I will try a new card - I have a few spares - I will post if this
fixes the problem.
Click to expand...
Please do try the other nic. However, SP2 doesn't "cause problems on
older machines". You can have problems with incompatible software and
hardware, and you will have problems if the machine isn't 100% spyware
and virus-free. But it isn't a given that SP2 doesn't work with older
machines.

Malke
 
Thanks for the clarification, I spoke a bit generally,

However, it is generally older machines where the BIOS, drivers,
applications, etc. can cause problems with SR-2

It is not as some tech people say only spyware and virus' on computers that
cause a variety of problems with SR-2. It can be as you also mention, BIOS
updates, older hardware that is not compatible with XP - which somehow worked
pre SR-2 but not with SR-2, etc.

Between 2 other consultants and myself we support > 600 individual small
business workstations with a variety of business applications, hardware etc.
And SR-2 had been a problem without about 20 % of the workstations.

I only work with a few home (XP-Home) machines that are not standardized the
one that suddenly lost access to the NIC being 1. Those tend to give me the
most problems and instead of spending hours trying to resolve this I post on
these boards for some more thoughts.

I will try a new card, did not have one with me at the time. Will post if
that is in fact /or not the resolution.
 
Does the NIC card show up in UNKNOWN in device manager? I have a computer
that has lost the NIC. I have uninstalled/reinstalled the onboard lan. It
finds the hardware and installs but does not install the drivers. The device
manager entry says it is unable to install the drivers. I have purchased a
NIC card, installed and have the same results. Yes, I did disable the
onboard lan before installing the NIC. This happened all of a sudden. SP2
has been installed for several weeks.
 
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