Vista - LAN error: Network cable is unplugged (but it is plugged in)

Hello, I have been passing through this forum while researching the problem and after an hour of not finding a solution I thought I might post my own thread.

I will try to explain the problem and the things I have already tried as completely and clearly as possible.

The problem is that my LAN network does not work. Under the manage networks tab, it has the status: " network cable is unplugged."
To be sure of this, I did a quick ipconfig /all and Ethernet Local Area Connection returned with:
Media State ........ : Media Disconnected.

I am living in a dorm room and we have Ethernet ports built into the walls and are not allowed routers. My roomate can connect to the wired system fine, so I don't believe that the port is the problem. We have also switched out all of the cables to make sure that none of them were problematic. They all work.

So I did some research to try and fix the problem and this is what I did.
1) I checked the device manager and there are no problems with my network card. The device is said to be working properly, drivers are updated, and their are no auxiliary network drivers with errors.

2) I have completely de-installed the network card from the device manager and rebooted, allowing windows to relocate and re-install the device.

3) I went into my Lan Network settings to make sure that both IPv4 and IPv6 would automatically assign IP addresses.

4) I went to the LAN adapter's configuration and played around with all of the flow control settings. Making it do all sorts of full and half duplexes of varying bandwidth. None of which worked

5) I cursed a little (okay, I may have cursed alot) in frustration.

6) I went to the LAN adapter's configuration and made sure that Power Saving mode was turned off (just incase windows was somehow auto disabling the device)

7) I performed netsh int ipv4 (and ipv6) reset commands.

I did not perform a winsock reset command because by this point I was almost sure that everything about the network card and my protocals was pretty ship shape and that it must be some sort of hardware malfunction.

So first off, does this sound like it could be a hardware malfunction? It is a laptop so I don't really have a way to manually remove and swap out network cards.

Second, if someone can better explain why a winsock reset would help after all of the above didn't, then I will gladly do one (also if i performed a winsock reset, would I have to re-setup the wireless printer in the dorm room).

and lastly, if anyone has any new tricks or suggestions about what may help please let me know I would be ever so greatful.

Thank you

Hello,

More than likely your not using an IPv6 connection so do the following:

Go to control panel > network > manage network connections > right click on the network connection with the problem > properties > uncheck the IPv6 setting.

You also might want to assign your pc a ip address, just to see if it affects your connection... See what your room mates address is then tweak it by one digit. Also did the internet connection work before or is this a new pc to this network?

Last year about 1/2 way through the school year my lan port stopped working (it was a different dorm but part of the same network. I will try your suggestions and see if they work.

Hi Gator04,

Are you able to ping the network controller in your computer? Try:

"ping 127.0.0.1"
-or-
"ping localhost"

Sky

Assign your pc a ip address and see if it connects... if your room mates is xxx.xxx.x.103 make your xxx.xxx.x.104 if its taken keep going up till you find an open address. That might resolve your problem...

Did you resolve your connection issue?