windows mega nightmare, reboots, no LAN

ellabbs

hiy guys,

i really hope someone can help me with this mega problem, it all started when i went away for a day and left my 2 kids (14 and 15 ) in the house, they say they didnt do anything at all, but when i came home the pc was repeatedly rebooting itself, it would load windows normally and then after no specific time reboot, sometimes while its loading itll re-boot. sometimes after its been on 5 mins or 10 mins then just reboot itself...

i decided to install a second copy of windows xp on the same drive, which went on uneventfull, the computer didnt reboot at all, but the new problem was, that the pc couldnt see the LAN connection so i cant connect to the net, i tried new cables, direct to modem, the cable from this laptop which is obviously working , but nothing would work, as far as windows is concerned i have no LAN card or port. checking network connections in controll panel it only shows the 1394 connection.... But on the rare occasions the original windows stays on long enough with out rebooting i can access the net no problems, but itll just repeatedly reboot.

i decided to put my spare ide drive in the pc on its own, disconnected the other 3 drives and re-installed windows xp pro on that drive, again everything went to plan, again, except i can not get onto the internet , i downloaded the nvidia lan drivers from this laptop and installed them on the poorly pc and still no lan conection can be found,

im not a newbie at computers and have managed to get by so far (first pc was back in 1995) but this is really really testing my patience, i can not understand why it cant see the lan connection, it always has before,when i insert the connection one light comes on, and the communicatiins light dosent come on at all, ( theres no talking between pc and router) maybe i have a bootsector virus?? how do i test and rid it..?

any help guys will really be appreciated i have 3 kids that cant do homework and project work but most importantly they can get on facebook ( disaster i know.)

idont think its anything to do with ram, powersupply or overheating cpu as it runs happy just no lan.

thankyou

ram_kerala

Can you make sure that Network Driver which you have installed is correct
Which is the network Card you are having ?
-It is always recommended to keep a copy of Drivers in a CD or in the secondary Partition of the machine so that it will reduce the time to fix it back

As the light is blinking in the network Card, you can be happy that Network Card is working
Only thing you need to be thorough about the driver.

Is the network Card is OnBoard - If so what is the MotherBoard make/ Model

Else, which is make and Model of Network Card.

bloodwynd

The system is running fine, and there is no boot sector virus. The problem would be with the device driver for the LAN card.

You did say that you already tried to install the driver, correct? If you could, open up device manager, and look for an icon that says network adapters and expand that - kindly tell us if there is a network adapter installed, and if there is an "x" mark on the icon, or a question mark or even a bang sign "yellow exclamation mark".

If there is an "x" mark, it just means that the driver is disabled and you just right click on it and select enable.

nandrasec

have you checked the eventlog for errors ? something should probably be there.