Hi all, I am using an aspire 5100 running xp 32 bit
Upon turnong on the comp one day I get the found new hardware dialogue box asking me to install the driver for the ethernet controler. I check to see what controler that is but in device manager it says only ethernet controler. upon searching in acer support, I see that what should be installed is a Realtek Nic and so i download the appropriate driver but windows does not recognize the driver. The first time this happened I restored to an earlier date, then an earlier until i went a month back and no changes. I then run my antivirus, i download adware, malwarebytes and a couple of other tools and run them all. I found a couple of trojans which avast did not pick up on its own, and a whole host of tracking malware etc. I rebooted after all scans and disinfections and same issue on startup. However, the next time i restarted, magically things were back to normal. Fast forward a month and the same issue has popped up. I repeated the same steps as before, found a trojan, some other stuff, cleared it all up and tried to reinstall the realtek driver over and over but no dice this time. I opened up the computer to try and identify the actual hardware to see if maybe someone had changed the network card as this is my dad's computer he bought used but this is a mini tower and where the ethernet dock is is only a square metal cupe attached firmly to the motherboard with no markings.
At this point i feel like i've tried everything. Any suggestoins?
Thanks!
Derek
