lightning - peculiar aftermath

[msd12345678]

There was a lightning strike near my friends house. Her neighbours set-top box went up in smoke, but all that happened to her was she lost Internet access from her XP PC. She could still use it for everything else (Word etc), but XP reported (incorrectly) that the ethernet cable was disconnected. Device Manager, meanwhile, was reporting everything to be ok with the ethernet hardware.

There was nothing at all wrong with her router - I connected to it wirelessly and via ethernet cable using my laptop, so it was definitely a PC problem.

To try to isolate the problem, I connected a USB Wireless adaptor to her PC. It installed ok first time, scanned and found 3 or 4 wireless hubs and connected to the local one perfectly. Only problem was there was no IP address allocated.

Since I knew DHCP was working fine from the router, but neither the wireless device nor the wired one could get an address allocated, it was now looking like the XP IP stack had somehow got corrupted. So I spent several hours on various registry cleaning tricks to no avail.

Finally, I did a complete XP reinstall from scratch. Result - no change at all.

I thought that maybe some obscure h/w fault was having a knock-on effect on the registry so I installed Linux as well, but still no joy.

So, at this point, it MUST be a hardware problem - yet there is no hardware involved in IP address allocation ! The USB ports (I tried several) are all working fine (e.g. I can use a USB hard drive in all of them), and the USB wireless card works (but can't get an IP address). All the USB ports and the ethernet port are off the motherboard (PC Chips A31G).

I have run out of steam. Can anyone suggest any further diagnostics I could run ? I don't want to buy a PCI ethernet card only to find that the fault (whatever it is) stops that from working too.

 

[tzk]

Have you tried unplugging the modem and seeing if that works. It might have been the modem that went up in smoke.

 

[BinarySynapse]

I've got a motherboard here with a similar problem. Lightening strike took out the ethernet port, but the system stills sees the hardware. I just can't get it to see that a cable is plugged in. Bought a $10 NIC from Best buy and the problem was solved.

As for your USB issue, I have no clue what could be wrong there.

 

[Nenu]

Try resetting the CMOS, it may have corrupted.

 

[msd12345678]

Thanks for the help so far everyone :

It might have been the modem that went up in smoke

the (DSL) modem is in the router, which is working fine, so thats in the clear.

Bought a $10 NIC from Best buy and the problem was solved

If I could get one for that sort of price over here (London) I'd try that straightaway. I'll take a look on Ebay anyway, but the USB evidence makes me doubt that a new card would fix it.

Try resetting the CMOS

Ok, I'll try that.

 

[msd12345678]

CMOS reset didn't seem to make any difference

I am going to spend a bit more time on trying the USB wireless card with Linux, then see if I can scrounge an old PCI card off a friend..

UPDATE 12/4/09
I finally got the wireless working - so that was a (very confusing) red herring.
Have now ordered a new PCI card.