Desktops & All-In-Ones

[Love-Hate-Tech]

Alan-London

I should have asked you first. Hopefully, I didn't make a mistake. I bought TP-LINK Gigabit PCIe Express Network Adapter Ethernet 10/100/1000 NIC - TG-3468. Will this one work? (fingers crossed)

[Alan-London]

Yes, this should be OK (but I can't guarantee of course) - you have one PCIe X1 slot as far as I can see (the short black one).
There are two versions of this card, V1 and V2. It should come with the necessary drivers but, should you need to download for any reason, just ensure you obtain the correct one. As you say, fingers crossed!

[Love-Hate-Tech]

Alan-London

I am still waiting for my card to come. I do have to ask you about disabling the card that doesn't work. You mentioned going into the bios to disable it. I was wondering if it is okay to go into Device Manager and just disable it that way? It was easy to do, but if that is problematic then I will go the bios route.

[Alan-London]

Disabling in device manager is perfectly acceptable. In terms of effectiveness, both achieve the desired result.
However, my choice would always be to disable through the BIOS where possible as this effectively removes the card from the machine. From then on, the BIOS will ignore it and it will no longer present to Windows.

Where disabled in device manager, Windows will still load the driver (but that's as far as it goes). Although the operational impact of disabling in device manager is, to all intents and purposes, nil, it does leave it untidy for those of us who just hate to see flags on problem devices!

In short, choose whichever available method suits you.

[Love-Hate-Tech]

Do I hit the F12 key to get into the BIOS? Could you give me some instructions on where to find it in the BIOS? I do hate the thought of it loading for no reason.

[Alan-London]

I don't have full documentation for the M5100 but I believe you need to press F2 to enter the BIOS.
I also believe you have a Phoenix BIOS. If I am looking at the correct BIOS, the opening page will list a number of sections. From this page:

Cursor to 'Integrated Peripherals' and press enter.
Cursor to 'South OnChip PCI Device' and press enter.
On the list, you should see 'Onboard LAN Controller'. Toggle to read 'Disabled'.
Press F10 to save the revised settings and exit.

If I'm not looking at the correct BIOS, you will need to navigate the menus until you find 'Onboard LAN Controller' (or similar) and toggle to read disabled. Be careful not to make any other changes (you can always press ESC to exit without saving changes if you make any error).

[Love-Hate-Tech]

Yes! You were correct that I have the Phoenix BIOS. I had to press the delete key to enter the BIOS. I never would have figured this out without your instructions. 

No more icons in Device Manager.

Thanks!!!

[Alan-London · Accepted solution]

Good. It just remains to install and configure the new network card. Hopefully, assuming Murphy isn't looking, it should be plain sailing! Let me know how it goes.

[Love-Hate-Tech]

Alan-London

Well, Murphy must have been on vacation. I got my card today. It came with a cd and instructions and is now working perfectly. 

Thank you for helping me solve this problem. I wish updating drivers would have worked, but at least adding a new card was easy with your help.

Now on to the next. I am going to start a new thread about my display since going from Vista 32 bit to Windows 7 64 bit. 

Thank you!!!!!!!