Ethernet Fried?

[Aolish]

Just a little while ago we had a pretty bad storm, like the doochebag that I really am, I had my PC running during the storm (and i wasn't even using it, am i lazy or what to turn it off?), after the storm passed i went back to my PC and noticed my internet connection kept going on and off. System tray notice kept saying that network cable is unplugged. After that it would disappear then on again on random intervals. I decided to restart my pc and see if that would fix the problem. The problems got alot worse when it said it discovered a new Ethernet device(?). It wasn't able to install the driver. I went to device manager and i see an exclamation point saying the device can not start.

I am now using the RJ45 jack on the back of my mobo. Works just fine. But the ethernet card no longer works now. I even tried to reinstall the drivers for it, it then says that the connection is limited and that i might not have resources to connect to the internet. So i have no choice but to use the RJ45 jack on the back of my mobo. Could this be a corrupted driver/OS install problem or is my ethernet hosed by the storm?

 

[danielsmith89]

It sounds like the storm has damaged your ethernet card or cable, or worse, may have damaged your motherboard.

Can you try a different ethernet card?

 

[Nodsu]

It is very common to have network devices damaged by lightning. You are lucky if it was only the ethernet card - any of the other devices connected to the network may have blown their ports too.

 

[Aolish]

It sounds like the storm has damaged your ethernet card or cable, or worse, may have damaged your motherboard.

Can you try a different ethernet card?

Unfortunately i dont have another ethernet to try out, however I will be buying another tomorrow at radio shack right across the street from where I live. Hopefully nothing else is damaged. I will post an update to see how the new ethernet card works. If it still doesn't work i can probably assume the storm hosed my motherboard also, or maybe the pci slot on the mobo was hosed.

 

[Aolish]

It is very common to have network devices damaged by lightning. You are lucky if it was only the ethernet card - any of the other devices connected to the network may have blown their ports too.

I have 2 PCs on my network... the other pc (the one I'm using now) seems to be working just fine. No problems so far. So I guess my main pc got hit. Really nice that it hitted my other pc and not this one lol