Weird problem with ethernet adapter

Dell laptop, Latitude D600, WinXP Home SP3. The on-board ethernet adapter (Broadcom 570x Gigabit) had a yellow ! exclamation point ! in the Device Manager. All attempts to re-install the driver resulted in "Cannot install hardware" errors or something very similar to that. So I right clicked it, selected "Uninstall", and rebooted with the thought that the OS would recognize it again and allow for a re-install of the driver. Nope. Now the device seems to have completely disappeared. It does not appear in the Device Manager anymore. I have tried changing the View to "Show Hidden Devices" and "Show by connection" and every other option, the ethernet still doesn't show up. The on-board ethernet is enabled in the BIOS, so I know that isn't it. I have already tried System Restore, and that didn't bring it back. I'm thinking the device simply died. The on-board wifi is working OK so I'm pretty sure that it's not a Windows related problem. Any thoughts or suggestions will be appreciated.

 

Hello,
Did you download the drivers from Dell. A person posted in a thread awhile ago about his ethernet on his D610. The ethernet did not work until he installed the Broadcom drivers.

I believe the D600 uses the 5705 chip.

You can download them here.

 

Personally, I believe the problem was the very first word in your post.
They get so darn proprietary that it's pathetic.

 

I've found Dell to be rather accomodating over the years. I've even used their OS discs to install Windows on many PCs. Download the drivers you need, onto a flash drive, and roll on through!

You want to talk proprietary, let's talk Apple!

 

6 of 1, 1/2 dozen of the other.
Both are pretty bad.

 

Actually, I too have had decent luck with Dell drivers, it's Gateway that's the WORST by far, followed closely by Toshiba. Sometimes Toshiba will list 3 different video drivers (Intel, Nvidia, ATI) and 4 or 5 different wifi drivers for the exact same model of laptop. Lame. but that's way off topic.....

I tried the Dell ethernet drivers, I tried the Broadcom drivers, I tried Broadcom drivers from HP, nothing worked. I used a couple different 'driver cleaner' tools, I tried some registry cleaning tools, I tried system restore, I tried sfc /scannow. Nothing worked. The device disappeared from the Device Manager completely. It doesn't even show up as an unknown. So I try to run the setup.exe for the driver(s), and it gets to a point and then errors out with "Device not found" or something VERY close to that. Honestly, I think the device has failed, completely. I believe it was dead when it was showing the yellow exclamation point because I couldn't get any drivers to install, or the driver would install then error out with "The device cannot start". When I uninstalled it from the device manager, that was it. Gone forever. The laptop looked like it had been on a rainforest expedition: it was REALLY dirty, some of the keys would stick (I cleaned all this), the screen is "artifacting" and has random blue lines here and there, there's some small cracks in the lid, the memory cover is held on with duct tape, about half the screws are missing.... so I'm pretty sure the laptop is just about ready to permanently hibernate in the big Recycle Bin in the sky. I used an add-on PCMCIA ethernet card and it worked perfectly; I used a USB>ethernet adapter and it too worked perfectly.

Thanks for the help though... it's always good to get other opinions, a different angle.... I do appreciate it!

 

Where did you pick up this visage of beauty? :-D


How about a Wi-Fi adapter?

 

The built-in wifi works perfectly (now that I reloaded the drivers, reset the TCP/IP and Winsock), it's the built-in wired ethernet that is toast.

I don't own this hunk-o-junk (thankfully). A client brought it to me because he couldn't get online using the wifi or the wired ethernet. I fixed the wifi connectivity issues first, then tackled the ethernet and it vanished forever. Understandably, the owner of the laptop does not want to spend any money on it, even if it's only $20 for a PCMCIA or USB ethernet adapter.

 

Well, convince him it's a solid netbook, and give him an embedded OS to run on it.

W7 compact, or Linux for netbooks, most likely the latter, could breathe a bit of new life into an "OLD" laptop.

I have an old Dell that the HDD is about shot on after 7 years since the last volume was created. (YIKES!):eek

What I figured, is it's a good candidate for a PATA SSD, and for $100 USD, give or take, it could perform with WXP SP3, like it was Windows brand new.

But, I'll let you know if I'm wrong, "ex drive post facto".