[SOLVED] Broken NIC?

[ttm]

Hi All,

I have good reason to believe that my NIC is dead.
Specifically it's a Qualcomm Atheros AR8161 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet.

The questions I'd like to ask is if there is any additional troubleshooting I can do to confirm that this is true, and if not what considerations I should have when replacing it in my laptop. (can I buy any NIC for my laptop or are there any subtle things I should be wary about? Also if you have any recommendations please do share.

I'm not sure when exactly the problem started but I realized I was probably on wifi when gaming which was causing a huge lag. I quit the game and discovered the problem.
The only significant events in the last few days that happened with my laptop that I did myself was cleaning out the dust from the fans. I don't think I damaged the NIC during this process because I was nowhere near touching it and also because it worked for several days later.

So the troubleshooting I did was:

• I tried pinging,I tried the windows network diagnosis on the affected interface. I looked at the drivers, the latest driver is installed, I tried uninstallling and reinstalling in device manager. I tried disabling and enabling it. The device appears to be working fine inside device manager. (if there was a hardware issue shouldn't this not be the case?)
• I have dual boot and when I opened up on Ubuntu to see if this was some OS related issue the problem also persists.
• Tested the cable via my Meraki Dashboard. (The Meraki switch where my laptop plugs into has a tool to accomplish that). The cable doesn't come up with any reported problems, but the link shows as down. I have cycled the port, tried plugging into a different port and nothing works. The port is enabled and the mac sticky address matches what I have for that NIC.
• When connecting the cable between any 2 other devices the cable works. A completely different cable between my laptop and any other device does not establish a connection which isolates the problem to the laptop.

Thank you! in advance for the feedback,

 

[bill001g]

The port should appear active on a switch or router with a good cable. If you in effect get no lights it means the port is dead.
Check the bios very carefully some machines you can disable the ethernet and other have power save options that mess things up.

Unfortunately like most desktops ethernet ports are built into the motherboard and can not be replaced. On a laptop you do not have the option to insert a pcie card so that makes it hard. Your only real option is to use a USB port and you will need a USB3 port to get gigabit speeds. It will also put a small extra load on the cpu because running via the USB is not as efficient as going over the pci bus.

 

[ttm]

Thanks for the reply. I checked the BIOS but there are no options that relate to the issue and everything seems to be normal. I guess I'll have to go with the USB Port Route.

 

[ttm]

I have bought an inexpensive adapter and that seems to work.... on the right hand side of the laptop
I just realized that all ports on the left hand side (ethernet, + 2 USB3 ports are all not working.)
ANy ideas what else could have happened here?

 

[bill001g]

Nothing you can likely fix. Some tiny part you likely can barely see failed on the motherboard. If it was the wifi that failed you can replace that in many machines but everything else is not removable.

If it is new enough maybe it is still under warranty