Wired internet connection suddenly disappears. It's random how it'll reappear. Can it be bypassed by wifi adapter?

[carpenter20m]

Hi all!

I have my desktop connected via ethernet to my router. The past two days my internet connection suddenly disappears while I'm actually using the computer (so no restarts cause this). So far I have fixed it in various ways:

1) Turning everything off (including the PSU switch and the plug) and turning them on 10 minutes later,

2) By playing with the ip parameters (the alert it gives me when I'm troubleshooting is that the local connection doesn't have valid ip parameteres and that it can't fix it). Then it fixed the problems.

When I don't have internet my ip address is the dreaded 169.254.x.x. Just troubleshooting almost never fixes it (see list above).

Now, my modem/router works perfectly. It connects wirelessly to my two cellphones AND my laptop. And when I connected the ethernet cable to my laptop, this wired connection also worked flawlessly.

I also tried connecting one of my phones to use it as a tethering device. I kept the wifi connection of my phone and connected it to my desktop via usb. I used that connection but I still got the invalid ip parameters for the local connection thing (note: this had worked when my older modem/router was broken and couldn't give me a wired connection but its wifi signal was fine, so it's a tested technique).

The gist

My guess is that the internal network card (or whatever it is called) is damaged. I don't want to have to get a new motherboard, because it's an old one and I'll have problems finding a new one at such a short notice (not to mention all the fuss of backing up everything and reinstalling everything). Do you think it would be possible to buy a wifi adapter and make it work? Would it bypass whatever is broken in the motherboard? Or would the same problem persist as the adapter will have to work with that broken part?

My specs:
Windows 10 Home
Intel i5 3470 Gigabyte
B75M-D3V mobo with Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller (this is what I need to bypass, I think)
AMD 7850 GPU
ZTE ADSL router (given to me by the internet company).

If you have any other ideas, I'd appreciate them, but I would really like the answer to whether I can completely bypass what I think is a broken network card.

Thank you.

 

[t53186]

Yes you can install a NIC card to bypass the MB nic

 

[carpenter20m]

Yes you can install a NIC card to bypass the MB nic

Thanks! Can it be anything? A PCI card? A USB wifi adapter? And, given the symptoms, are we sure it's gonna solve the problem?

 

[bill001g]

Do you get the red x thing or does it just not work. You could try to unplug and replug the ethernet cable. You could also try a new ethernet cable I suppose. They normally do not go bad but it is a cheap thing to try.

 

[carpenter20m]

Do you get the red x thing or does it just not work. You could try to unplug and replug the ethernet cable. You could also try a new ethernet cable I suppose. They normally do not go bad but it is a cheap thing to try.

It's a yellow triangle at first that becomes a red x after troubleshooting and telling me that ip parameters are invalid. I did the unplug/replug thing and since it works perfectly with my laptop, I don't think that's it.

 

[bill001g]

The red x thing normally only comes up if it thinks there is a hardware issue. The yellow means it has some kind of communication issue that is normally software or settings

 

[jsmithepa]

Normally you should not have 2 NICs enable at the same time, ethernet+WIFI. Again normally your box only wants to see 1 DHCP server. When 2 NICs enabled, definitely they should not be on the same subnet.