Question There's no ethernet connection on my PC even tho the cable is plugged in. Is my NIC dead?

[andrejradojcic]

I haven't used my PC for a few months until I decided to set it up again a few days ago. I reset the BIOS my removing the CMOS battery and shorting cmos reset pins on my motherboard with a screwdriver. I was pretty sure everything was fine until I reinstalled windows 10 and noticed that there aren't any network adapters visible to the system. Just bunch of WAN miniports in Device Manager and the change adapter settings folder in control panel is emtpy.
Basically, the system can't see my adapter for some reason. Ethernet port is blinking while plugged in by the way.
What I've tried:
-Resetting the BIOS again
- Reinstalling two different Windows 10 versions
-Installing Realtek Network Drivers but an error message popped up every time: "Realtek network controller was not found"
- I checked Onboard Devices part of the BIOS if the Realtek adapter is turned on, and it is.
-Booting Ubuntu Linux from an USB, same results came back, no network adapter detected

I would really appreciate any of your opinions or help.

 

[drea.drechsler]

I haven't used my PC for a few months until I decided to set it up again a few days ago. I reset the BIOS my removing the CMOS battery and shorting cmos reset pins on my motherboard with a screwdriver. I was pretty sure everything was fine until I reinstalled windows 10 and noticed that there aren't any network adapters visible to the system. Just bunch of WAN miniports in Device Manager and the change adapter settings folder in control panel is emtpy.
Basically, the system can't see my adapter for some reason. Ethernet port is blinking while plugged in by the way.
What I've tried:
-Resetting the BIOS again
- Reinstalling two different Windows 10 versions
-Installing Realtek Network Drivers but an error message popped up every time: "Realtek network controller was not found"
- I checked Onboard Devices part of the BIOS if the Realtek adapter is turned on, and it is.
-Booting Ubuntu Linux from an USB, same results came back, no network adapter detected

I would really appreciate any of your opinions or help.

You've reset BIOS (I assume you mean CMOS settings) but have you checked in the BIOS to ensure the on-board NIC is enabled? The default setting could state enabled but actually be disabled since board MFR's are idiots sometimes when it comes to BIOS defaults. So try it both ways.

It's not uncommon to zap a NIC... possibly with an ESD event even though the RJ45 leads should be well protected against that. You might need to get a cheap little NIC that plugs in an open slot, assuming you don't have a mITX system. Even then, USB NIC's are pretty capable now.