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The other day I reset the bios on my Dell Dimension e310 and installed windows 7 on it right after. This computer is mainly just for me to play around on so I've been installing a lot of OSs on it trying to find one I like. After I reset the Bios windows could detect the ethernet connection but couldn't connect. I thought it might have been a compatibility problem between the computer and windows 7 so I went and installed Ubuntu Gnome. Same problem. Could detect but not connect. I've checked in the Bios and the port is enabled so could it be that I lost the drivers when i reset the Bios? I only reset factory settings by clicking the option in the Bios, I didn't take out the cmos battery or jump it. Any help is appreciated!
cam626
Posted 2015-06-04T18:59:58.703
Reputation: 21
Drivers are loaded by the operating system not the BIOS. So you restoring the original settings of the BIOS might have reset a setting that controls the LAN device but has NOTHING to do with the device drivers. – Ramhound – 2015-06-04T19:02:45.773
@Ramhound Thanks for the quick response but what does that mean for me in terms of getting it to work? Before I reset the Bios the port worked in Windows XP. – cam626 – 2015-06-04T21:08:37.873
@cam626: Have you installed the Win7 drivers for all your hardware, especially the network adapters? – Karan – 2015-06-05T21:40:47.133
@Karan I tried to install the drivers from here: http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/dhs/product-support/servicetag/9GC8191/drivers?rvps=y and i also tried this aswell: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/18713/Network-Adapter-Driver-for-Windows-7-. The first one told me that it couldnt install on a 64 bit operating system even though i am using 32 bit windows and the second told me that it couldn't install because there was no network adapter present
– cam626 – 2015-06-05T22:02:05.280@cam626: Ensure Windows is up to date. Also, what does device manager show? – Karan – 2015-06-05T22:08:11.237
@Karan I have absolutely no way of connecting this computer to the internet without the network adapter working so I can't update windows. I might be able to use an air card or a usb wifi adapter but I don't have one right now. Device manager has an error on the VIA 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller that says the device cannot start (Code 10) I don't know if that's related or not. – cam626 – 2015-06-06T01:44:12.790
What network adapters are shown by Device Manager? No errors there? – Karan – 2015-06-06T01:57:31.713
@Karan I do not see any network adapters in device manager – cam626 – 2015-06-06T02:05:53.913
So no network adapters in DevMan but still Windows can detect the ethernet connection? There's something mighty messed up here and since it doesn't work under Linux either I have to say it sounds like hardware failure. – Karan – 2015-06-06T02:10:34.517
Ok I have ordered a usb wifi adapter which will hopefully work. Thanks. – cam626 – 2015-06-06T02:14:29.010