Strange problem : I can not install network adapters -- network categorychanged to unknown in device

[A.J. Nylander]

Hi,

I tried to install a network adapter to my customers old computer
because we thought that the internal adapter might be faulty. The reason
why we thought that it could be broken was that the windows was changed
the "Networking" category in device manager to "Unknown" and under that
the NIC said that there was a problem with the drivers or the card isn't
working.

First I tried to install Realtek NIC. Windows did finded that card and
installed drivers and asked us to boot the system like we did. After the
reboot that Realtek also said that there is a problem with the drivers
or the card is not working.

So we tried to install 3COM's adapter. Same story. USB adapter? Same
story. Also I tried to install standard PCI modem and ISDN adapter which
was working fine!

Ok. I said to my customer, that the windows is bye bye and we have to
reinstall it. It was Windows 2000 system.

Then came this second customer... at next day... He had Windows XP Home
with excatly the same freaking problem!

What is going on? a virus? How that can be fixed!?

 

[Guest]

I seem to be having trouble with my network adapter as well. I did a full
system recovery a few days ago and everything seemed to be fine, but I am
seeing a USB mass storage device in my device manage. I am seeing all these
extra drives on my computer now. They all have something to do with the USB
device which has about 4 generic root hubs... Shouldn't this have a product
ID if it is truly a Microsoft product?

 

[Randy M. Prescott]

Add me to the list. The Networking category is missing from the device
manager and the Realtek NIC shows up under other hardware. I can get the
network and Internet to work but when I try to enable the firewall built
into Windows, an error message states that it can not find the NIC it needs
to apply the firewall to.