h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was having a really good weekend for once - to end a really good week too. Well, good for me anyway. Nothing major got worse, so that's about as good as it ever gets, for me.
Right up until a fault occured while copying my flatmate's MP3s across the network onto my computer.

And of course I didn't just lose the files I was transferring, or the connection to the server.
Oh no, not me.

I lost the subnet.
The entire f*cking subnet is now bung. My computer now won't even recognise that it /has/ a network adaptor. BUT, it recognises enough that it doesn't register a fault, so it wouldn't let me reinstall the network adaptor drivers. So I tried uninstalling the existing drivers, one at a time. Every single one of them froze the computer either just before or just after they uninstalled.

I have now reinstalled various network adaptor drivers, off both the OS CD and the motherboard driver CD, a total of eight times. Nothing is working. Unless my flatmate has any other options, I'm going to get home from work and reinstall windows. Or more likely, sit with a bung computer until I manage to track down a decent copy of Debian Linux. I'm so sick of Microsoft bloatware rubbish.

Mind you, it's caused some interesting effects in my network connections: For a while my network status was "Connected and secure", and the Network adaptors were "working perfectly", yet my packet movement was nill in both directions and my pings to my flatmates computers were going nowhere. So I tried pinging the hub instead. No response. So I tried a broadcast ping. No response again, which was weird - I should have had a response from myself, at least. So I tried pinging myself. Nothing. At this point I'm scratching my head, because not being able to ping myself is like talking with no mouth.

After a couple of attempts at reinstalling the drivers, I've made progress: I can now access the internet. But I still can't ping anything on the LAN, including myself. Which is even stranger, because that's like being able to leave your bedroom and go explore the rest of the world, without knowing where the bedroom door, the lounge, or the front door are. Or being able to move, come to think of it - I just realised that at that point I had uninstalled the DNS protocol drivers too.

I hate microsoft. I want them to burn.

I think what I need right now is to go home; draw a nice, long, hot bath; and smack myself in the head with a brick.

Hi JermsG

Sorry to hear about the agro your system has been giving you. I don't know enough about your problem to be able to help at all

Part of my Christmas break was taken up checking my home network, all the network points, cable lengths, any connection faults etc. With only 8 errors out of 84 points that wasn't bad going. . These errors however made it necessary to crawl behind furniture, unscrew faceplates, re-krone several of the points and retest them all. thanks goodness for modern electronic testing equipment.

Hope you get it sorted soon

Yvonne