onboard NIC died after power failure?

left the computer on last night and went to bed...
in the middle of the night the power to the house er...fluttered. The computer of course died and rebooted. Now this morning, turn it on, and the NIC on the motherboard says it's connected at 100MBps but cannot get an IP. (Windows assigns it an internal 196.xxx.xxx.xxx one).

Can a power fluctuation fry a NIC? I have a surge protector on the power connection...

I've removed the adapter, reinstalled the drivers (the nic is found as VIA Rhine II Fast Ethernet Adapter) and same issue still happens. I've now plugged in to the cable modem using the USB port but I'd like to know what the deal is with the NIC. Other than what I've done, is there something I can do to test the connection? Seems odd a power fluctuation would do that but...

 

The dial-up, internal, modem in my mother's computer had to be replaced after a thunderstorm. No other components were damaged. She even had the phone line connected to a surge protector with phone line protection. We replaced the surge protector after that event.

To get a NIC working again in your computer, you may have to install a NIC card in a PCI slot. Here's one that should work quite well: D-Link - DFE-530TX+ - 10/100Mbps Ethernet LAN Adapter

 

so I installed a NIC card. Linksys - lights up just fine.

I'm getting the same problem. No IP but only an internal one.

The only network connection that works is this USB connection - which sucks cuz it's laggy. What driver could have gotten destroyed? What can I repair to get the NIC to work again? AAAARRRRRRRGGGGH I hate issues like this.

 

did you try powering down and up, the high speed modem (adsl, cable)?, do you have a router? if so log into your router and check the status.

 

I think howiefix has stated your problem.

You should shut down everything, the computer the router and the modem.

leave everything off for at least 2 minutes then start the modem first and allow it to boot, then start the router and allow it a minute to boot, then start the computer.

 

maybe try ipconfig (/release and /renew)?
Interesting reading:
http://compnetworking.about.com/cs/windowsnetworkin1/ht/renewipaddrwxp.htm

 

I tried the repowering thing to no avail. However, I assumed the reboot that the cable company did was a reset, but I guess it wasn't. What finally got all to work again was punching the little button on the back of the modem with a toothpick.

Thanks for the responses!