Onboard Lan suddenly stopped working

[fracta]

My usb drivers weren't installed properly, so I went onto gigabyte's site to download them. They installed fine. I also saw in device manager (windows 7) that I didn't have my network drivers installed either, so downloaded them and installed.
Then I saw chipset drivers (I think) called Intel INF installation so I figured, best to install those as well. PC ran fine. Even after a restart.
I needed to reboot into my other OS, Linux Mint, and was able to use lan fine as usual. When I return to windows however, No lan. Device manager has ethernet controller installed (realtek) but has yellow exclamation mark on network controller. Tried reinstalling drivers and everything.
I rebooted into linux, and now no lan on linux either. I didn't flash the BIOS. Not intentionally or visibly anyway. I thought I was just installing software. I don't understand. Checked BIOS to make sure lan in enabled, no settings turning it off. Checked greenlan thing. Nothing. Can't figure it out. When I try to connect in windows, it tells me to plug in the cable. I have.
Totally stumped on this one. Luckily I have wireless I could set up. But really need lan back.
No lights on the back flashing or anything, but i am pretty sure I have seen some activity there while I was unplugging everything etc.
Tried other cables. Tried direct to modem instead of thru switch. Dont get it.
Realtek Ethernet Diagnostic Utility also shows nothing. I don't think I can even see lan in ipconfig. No mac address.
Please help!

 

[Hawkeye22]

Do a system restore to a point before you installed the lan drivers.

 

[fracta]

Thanks, I had forgotten about that feature with windows. Unfortunately it didn't help too much. Got rid of old stuff and now I just have gigabit ethernet with no wierd network controller in device manager.
I can see the lan adapter in Network Connections and its still telling me to plug in the cable.
Also in device manager, i no longer have my usb drivers installed (naturally) and there is also a PCI simple communications controller without drivers either. Could that be part of the problem?
And how would this have affected my linux os?

 

[mcnumpty23]

how about setting bios to failsafe defaults

 

[delbrugge]

its bad. install a cheap pci nic

 

[fracta]

what? how? I've never had this problem before. Is it completely unrelated to me installing drivers? Is this a gigabyte thing; onboard lans just dying? How did it happen?

 

[Engima]

See if you can disable and then enable the specific LAN driver. I did that a few times on my computer and it fixed my sporadic LAN connection problem.

 

[Hawkeye22]

Thanks, I had forgotten about that feature with windows. Unfortunately it didn't help too much. Got rid of old stuff and now I just have gigabit ethernet with no wierd network controller in device manager.
I can see the lan adapter in Network Connections and its still telling me to plug in the cable.
Also in device manager, i no longer have my usb drivers installed (naturally) and there is also a PCI simple communications controller without drivers either. Could that be part of the problem?
And how would this have affected my linux os?

If there are any yellow exclamation points in device manager then you need to install drivers for them or your computer won't operate properly.

I'm not sure why a system restore wouldn't have fixed that since it should roll back all the drivers to previous versions.

 

[fracta]

So a transformer blew at the substation and cut off power to the whole town. When I turn my pc on next, everything is back to normal. Lan port now works. Unfortunately, I'm back to having usb ports that don't work properly.
I don't know what I did, but its fixed. Maybe system restore fixed it? Who knows. Thanks for your help!

 

[fracta]

Best answer selected by fracta.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey