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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
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  • 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 Jun 04 '15 at 19:02
  • @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 Jun 04 '15 at 21:08
  • @cam626: Have you installed the Win7 drivers for all your hardware, especially the network adapters? – Karan Jun 05 '15 at 21:40
  • @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 Jun 05 '15 at 22:02
  • @cam626: Ensure Windows is up to date. Also, what does device manager show? – Karan Jun 05 '15 at 22:08
  • @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 Jun 06 '15 at 01:44
  • What network adapters are shown by Device Manager? No errors there? – Karan Jun 06 '15 at 01:57
  • @Karan I do not see any network adapters in device manager – cam626 Jun 06 '15 at 02:05
  • 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 Jun 06 '15 at 02:10
  • Ok I have ordered a usb wifi adapter which will hopefully work. Thanks. – cam626 Jun 06 '15 at 02:14

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