Realtek GbE Controller not showing up in Device Manager (PO3-600)

Hi Folks,

I have a strange problem as my LAN is not working after i upgraded to the latest Windows 10 patch yeserday. The primary Issue is that Realtek GbE LAN Controller is not detected by device manager. So far i did the following things:

Tried to install drivers manually - fails before it says a Realtek card is not detected
Checked bios ot ensure than onboard LAN is enabled. For good measure i have loaded Bios defaults too.
Went to device manager, tried "scan for hanrdware changes" in the network adapters section.

none of them worked, and the LAN controller is still undetected.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

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billsey

According to the block diagram that LAN port and two USB 3.1 gen 2 ports on the rear of the system come off the Realtek RTL8111 chip. The two USB 3.1 gen 1 and four USB 2.0 ports come directly off the chipset. From what I see on the back of the machines two of those ports aren't actually loaded though, and it's not clear which two they are:

If I was sure the two ports on the back were the two coming through the Realtek chip then we could verify their function to help make sure the chip is working. Since we can't we don't have that help. The Realtek chip isn't sitting behind an internal USB port like the card reader or WiFi/Bluetooth is so the fairly common issue with those getting garbled by a Windows update doesn't hold true. Try rolling back the updates and then reinstalling them one by one.

Ronnie911

Thanks.

So technically, if all the USB ports at the back are fucntioning, then the Realtek chip should fucntion?

I am sure that all of them are fucntioning, as i have soemthings or the other connected to pretty much all of them (2 gaming controllers, 2 external HDDs etc) and they all work. I wll test all 6 USB ports at the back though.

I am not 100% sure it was due to a system upgrade, but it was working fine, and then i did a regular windows 10 update as is suggested by the system (chose update and shutdown), and next day mroning - the GbE controller is not showing up anymore. It's too much of a coincidence that the controller died exactly at the upgrade time.

I tried rolling back the Windows 10 upgrade using a system restore point, but that failed. Twice. I will post a difference between the current and the system restore point in terms of drivers.

Ronnie911

Update: All USB Ports - 6 in the back and 2 in the front work properly, as i tested. So does this mean that the Realtek COntroller is still alive?

I checked the system restore point. You can see that version 10.26 was removed, and 10.36 was added during this installation. However i cannot restore this - the restoration simply fails. Tried that twice.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/eu/83cp95yfptyu.png

GotBanned

What an interesting problem you got here. One thing that might explain its disappearance is a physical failure, but that is very unlikely.

Device Manager => View => Show hidden devices. Can you see that elusive Realtek LAN Controller now? I'm not sure this can be of any help, even if it is still listed as once being there.

Just curious, although I kinda guess the result. If you run Intel Driver & Support Assistant, does it find Realtek and possible offer new driver? You can d/l it https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/homepage.html and then Support => Auto-update your Drivers.

ADDITION/EDIT: If had another SSD or HDD, you could try to install Windows to it. (Just remove the current OS drive before doing anything.)

If there is no LAN after fresh install, then it might be a physical problem.
If there is, then I blame Windows.

billsey

Try manually uninstalling the drivers, deleting the files as part of the process, then rebooting and reinstalling. It sure sounds like the drivers got corrupted.

Ronnie911

GotBanned said:

What an interesting problem you got here. One thing that might explain its disappearance is a physical failure, but that is very unlikely.

Device Manager => View => Show hidden devices. Can you see that elusive Realtek LAN Controller now? I'm not sure this can be of any help, even if it is still listed as once being there.

tried it. does not show it even after selecting show hidden devices.

GotBanned said:

Just curious, although I kinda guess the result. If you run Intel Driver & Support Assistant, does it find Realtek and possible offer new driver? You can d/l it https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/homepage.html and then Support => Auto-update your Drivers.

tried it, but does not list Realtek LAN

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6029997/uploads/editor/0i/53tjyg11v4e1.png

GotBanned said:

ADDITION/EDIT: If had another SSD or HDD, you could try to install Windows to it. (Just remove the current OS drive before doing anything.)/div>

would wait till weekend and then probably do this.

Ronnie911

billsey said:

Try manually uninstalling the drivers, deleting the files as part of the process, then rebooting and reinstalling. It sure sounds like the drivers got corrupted.

tried that a few times. The installation fails by saying Realtek card is not found.

GotBanned

Device Managed doesn't show it even as a hidden? This is weird. Just as an example: every USB thumb drive I have plugged in this PC since I reinstalled Windows about a month ago is still being listed in Device Manager as Hidden device.

Umm.. have you tried to install new chipset drivers? Isn't chipset driver the very thing that tells what is what and where it is?

Ronnie911

GotBanned said:

Device Managed doesn't show it even as a hidden? This is weird. Just as an example: every USB thumb drive I have plugged in this PC since I reinstalled Windows about a month ago is still being listed in Device Manager as Hidden device.

Umm.. have you tried to install new chipset drivers? Isn't chipset driver the very thing that tells what is what and where it is?

did you mean the motherboard/bios drivers? not i cna try reinstalling that again. what i installed was the Realtek driver (Install_Win10_10053_11222021.zip) from Realtek. I also downloaded and installed the older version of the Realtek LAN drivers (Lan_Realtek_10.36.701.2019_W10x64_A) from Acer product page.

GotBanned

I'm not sure BIOS is causing this, because your LAN worked earlier. Updating Windows doesn't touch BIOS in any way that I know of. But if there is a newer non-beta BIOS available, I would flash it.

I was talking about your motherboard's chipset drivers, which should be available at Acer's support site. Maybe that is all that is needed and the LAN controller will pop up.

Ronnie911

GotBanned said:

I'm not sure BIOS is causing this, because your LAN worked earlier. Updating Windows doesn't touch BIOS in any way that I know of. But if there is a newer non-beta BIOS available, I would flash it.

I was talking about your motherboard's chipset drivers, which should be available at Acer's support site. Maybe that is all that is needed and the LAN controller will pop up.

you are right about the bios. it's already updated to the latest version, so i don't see a point in flashing it again.

I reinstalled the latest ACer chipset drivers and restarted. still no love from the Realtel controller.

GotBanned

Since you checked earlier that the LAN controller was enabled in BIOS and tried just about everything, it's starting to look that the only thing left is a component failure.

Well, there's still a possibility that installing Windows on a new drive (remove all other storage devices while doing this) might do the trick, but I doubt it. If even this fails, you'll need a new motherboard, a whole new PC or at least a cheap USB LAN adapter.

Ronnie911

GotBanned said:

Well, there's still a possibility that installing Windows on a new drive (remove all other storage devices while doing this) might do the trick, but I doubt it. If even this fails, you'll need a new motherboard, a whole new PC or at least a cheap USB LAN adapter.

agreed. looks like this is the possible way out. a TP Link USB LAN Adaptor is udner $10 bucks so ordered one from Amazon already. Hopefully that resolves the problem. I guess it's not worth spending anymore time trying to fix this - i will assume it's a component failure.