Question Ethernet connection problem - - - what am I missing ?

Jul 29, 2022
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Hello everyone. I am at a loss and I know this fix is simple, as I have had it before, but can't remember what to do. Everything was working fine until I swapped out some ram and when I booted the computer up, it asked to either run setup or boot normally. I booted normally but my ethernet connection wasn't working. I went into the bios and turned it on but still nothing. It says "Media disconnected" when I try to do the dns commands.

I remember finding the solution here and kicking myself over how simple it is. I've tried for days reading and watching guides but I know it's super easy.
 

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
Hello everyone. I am at a loss and I know this fix is simple, as I have had it before, but can't remember what to do. Everything was working fine until I swapped out some ram and when I booted the computer up, it asked to either run setup or boot normally. I booted normally but my ethernet connection wasn't working. I went into the bios and turned it on but still nothing. It says "Media disconnected" when I try to do the dns commands.

I remember finding the solution here and kicking myself over how simple it is. I've tried for days reading and watching guides but I know it's super easy.
Media disconnected means that the PC can't determine if a cable is plugged in. Verify that you did plug the ethernet cable into the correct location. Some motherboards have multiple ethernet ports. If so, try the other one. Next, try a new cable. Your cable may have been damaged or broken from use.
 
Jul 29, 2022
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Have you gone to settings, network and internet, click on ethernet and enable it?
Yes. I've disabled and enabled it many times.

Media disconnected means that the PC can't determine if a cable is plugged in. Verify that you did plug the ethernet cable into the correct location. Some motherboards have multiple ethernet ports. If so, try the other one. Next, try a new cable. Your cable may have been damaged or broken from use.
The cable is fine. It works on another pc. Sadly this motherboard only has 1 ethernet port.
 

kanewolf

Titan
Moderator
Yes. I've disabled and enabled it many times.


The cable is fine. It works on another pc. Sadly this motherboard only has 1 ethernet port.
A cable that "works" with one device is not guaranteed to work on another. You bend the cable in different ways when you move it between devices.
What is on the other end of this working cable? How long is the cable? Is it a flat cable ?
 
Jul 29, 2022
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A cable that "works" with one device is not guaranteed to work on another. You bend the cable in different ways when you move it between devices.
What is on the other end of this working cable? How long is the cable? Is it a flat cable ?
I've moved it between another device multiple times and the cable works, just not with this desktop. It is not a flat cable and goes from the router to the desktop. Length is probably about 6 feet.
I've tried things from doing the winsock and dns reset and flush etc thing, to resetting the network as well. Even followed a guide on magic packets that I knew nothing about before but no success.
 
media disconnected is most times a hardware issue but it might be a driver issue. It is hard to say most driver issue related to ethernet the ethernet port does not even exist on ipconfig commands.

Anything like DNS etc is all related to data transfer protocols you do not even have the device electrically connected.

Most times this is a cable issue but in theory you might have somehow damaged the port. I would go back and check the bios and any windows setting for something that might have disabled the port. If there are any so called green or power save setting try to disable those.

I would try a bootable USB unix image. There are a number of these but they are designed to test machines without installing on the hard drive. Most have drivers for all the common ethernet. You could run things like speedtest but if you can ping your router IP you know the ethernet is good. This is mostly to see if it is worth chasing strange setting issues with windows. If it does not work on a linux test you start to consider a add in PCIE ethernet card or maybe a USB3 external ethernet dongle.
 
You can try uninstalling the device driver [Run devmgmt.msc] and then uninstall the network device itself. Then restart the computer. It should reload with the adapter and driver settings. If it doesn't then manually install the latest driver. Also check to make sure network sharing is disabled