inbuilt Wired LAN card not detected sometimes

It has been happening quite a lot recently on the Toshiba Laptop.

When i boot up the laptop like I have always done (power supply plugged in), the laptop starts up and goes into windows Vista, but the in-built LAN card does not get detected, forcing me to do a couple of restarts until the LAN card is detected.

By not being detected, I mean that no power lights (green or amber) light up at all, in network connections it does not appear and also in device manager the network card (RealTek) does not appear either. If it boots up and detects successfully they appear in network connections and in the device manager.

Once I have booted up the laptop successfully with the LAN detected, it works flawlessly for the rest of the day, even if i need to do a restart if i install new software / windows updates, it gets detected immediately.

The next morning I have the same problems again having the card not being detected, forcing me to do a couple of restarts (a couple could mean upto 3-10 times!).

Is there a way I could resolve this without having to send out my laptop to Toshiba?

Or would this be a hardware problem and the motherboard/LAN card needs to be changed?
say a loose connection? which i doubt as it works fine when it does get detected....

 

Next time, try to turn off the machine, remove the battery, remove the power cord, wait 5 seconds, put everything back, start laptop. See if it gets detected. If it does, it could be a hardware problem. Does moving your pc around help to find it? Did you ever loose it while moving around with the notebook?

 

Have you updated all of your firmware, particularly the ethernet/NIC drivers, as well as your BIOS? The 965 chipsets from Intel have a number of errata (i.e., design screwups) that affect the ethernet card, some of which may cause the NIC to not initialize, and most of which should have workarounds in the firmware and/or BIOS. For reference, see Intel Doc No. 313057-012 and Doc No. 313054-003.

 

The proper procedure on flushing the notebook as follows:

1)Take out the battery pack and unplug the AC power

2) Hold the power button for 30 seconds or more

3) Only plug in the AC power this time and try booting up


Ethernet cards are usually soldered into the motherboard.

Try changing the drivers, updating BIOS, updating to SP1. Do what you possible can software side.

 

I've tried switching it off, removing battery, removing power cord, waiting a few minutes even and putting it all back together, it doesn't work all the time, but sometimes it does which I find strange.
Moving it around does not help find it, moving it around does not lose it either, once its detected, its detected for good.

I have updated the Realtek drivers from their website. This did not fix it.
I have also got BIOS version 2.30 from Toshiba which is the latest.

I'll have a look into the intel doc thingy, I already have SP1 and latest BIOS.

 

When you turn the computer on and it goes through its POST routine, do you get any beeps from the BIOS, or does it list anything onscreen, e.g., something about not detecting the wireless card or some other device?

 

None, no sounds and no notifications when it boots up after pressing the power button, it goes through its regular routine.

If the LAN card is detected after pressing the power button, then the green light goes on and stays on through the whole bootup process. If the LAN isn't detected then the green light is off throughout the whole process and stays off.

 

All the remarks are very valuable, and the solutions are as many as people will try to help you, so here is my very low techy insight. Try to run an anti spyware, or even anitvirus application and tell us what happens.

I would hate to come to the conclusion is your nic, but let's hope that there is something deterring the driver to work normally but in a irregular basis.

 

When you updated the drivers, did you uninstall the old driver before you installed the new driver?

 

I have done quite a few scans and nothing is wrong.
Mcafee Virus scan
Windows Defender scan
Ad-aware scan

Actually, I didn't completely uninstall..., I'll give that a try now, reboot, then carry on with my daily activities and i'll see what happens tomorrow morning when I start up the laptop first thing (as usually first boot-up seems to always mess up and not detect)

 

Also, have you ever opened this thing up, or do you feel comfortable opening it up? If so, then it might be worthwhile cracking it open just to physically inspect the card and its connections to see if anything looks loose/broken. Don't do it unless you've done it before or you're really, really comfortable doing so; otherwise, you've been warned.

 

I did the uninstall and reinstall. This time it gave a notification of installed NIC 6.0. last time with the repair option it only said updated Realtek driver and didn't give a notice of NIC version number

I'll find out tomorrow morning if its worked or not.

I won't be opening it up at all as it is still under warranty.
I'll be sending it off as last resort to get it repaired / parts replaced if need be.

 

I'll keep my fingers crossed.

 

I don't think is going to change anything.

 

Ok, new day, new morning!
It booted up detecting first thing today

I'll keep this updated every morning, just incase it doesn't get detected again

Thanks guys!

 

Glad to hear it. Keep us posted.

 

I guess you fingers are still crossed

 

this makes 4 days in a row that it has started up properly now

 

Something must have helped

 

thats good to hear. if the problem re-occurs, do everything above again..

 

Including crossing the fingers?

 

That's probably the only thing that worked!

 

The crossing finger protocol, is wireless