my computer no longer recognizes my onboard NIC. i go to device manager and see that the NIC now has an exclamation point next to it, and not only that, the icon for it is not a network card but an unknown device(which is a little gray diamond). i un-installed and re-installed several times, both in safe mode, safemode with networking, and regular. each time it says it was installed properly and i need to reboot to take affects. once i reboot i get the same problem. when i check out the card, it says "this device is not working properly... windows was unable to load the drivers for this device. code(31)" i check the driver details, it says c:\windows\system32\drivers\rtl8139.sys which is exactly as it should be. i manually check to see if that file is there, and it is.
i then went and bought a PCI slot NIC, installed it from the cd, and i get the same result. whats scary is that the device type is still unknown. then i took a wireless nic out of a working pc on my home network, and put it in the broken pc, and get the same exact result. but it was not even recognized as a network device on my broken pc. i noticed it uses the same drivers on both pc's. i confirmed this using driver details, yet on the broken pc it says it could not load the drivers code 31.
in conclusion, im not even sure if its hardware or software. i cant figure out why it wont recognize any network adapter i install, and why it says it cant load the drivers for it when the drivers are right where they should be.
any insight is appreciated
i then went and bought a PCI slot NIC, installed it from the cd, and i get the same result. whats scary is that the device type is still unknown. then i took a wireless nic out of a working pc on my home network, and put it in the broken pc, and get the same exact result. but it was not even recognized as a network device on my broken pc. i noticed it uses the same drivers on both pc's. i confirmed this using driver details, yet on the broken pc it says it could not load the drivers code 31.
in conclusion, im not even sure if its hardware or software. i cant figure out why it wont recognize any network adapter i install, and why it says it cant load the drivers for it when the drivers are right where they should be.
any insight is appreciated