Ethernet connection stopped working with Windows 7

[#1]

My router WiFi is working fine, but the Ethernet connection to my old PC goes down a few moments after Windows 7 starts up. Disconnected the cable and then connected it to my Windows 8 laptop, which received the broadband signal without issues, so that seems to confirm this may be Windows 7 related.

The connection worked normally until this morning (20230408) and I haven’t installed anything on the PC nor made any manual changes to settings.

Would be grateful for any suggestions or to hear from anyone else who experienced this problem.

[#2]

@Colpeper1944 Your W7 machine is old. Maybe the Ethernet socket is worn/damaged. If the same cable works on your W8 machine, that would be my guess, anyway.

[#3]

Fair comment on the PC (which recently turned 12), but the physical socket appears to be in good condition and it’s suspicious that the status light changes from green to amber only when Windows is starting.

I was hoping that one or two others of the dwindling number of Win7 users might have found the same thing just starting to happen, which might suggest that an OS update is now unavoidable.

[#4]

My W7 machine is still happily working, although I've only used the Ethernet connection half a dozen times in its life. Does it still work on Wi-Fi? As i said, it sounds like an issue with the Ethernet connection, but would be a bit of an expensive repair on a machine of that age, TBH.

[#5]

@Colpeper1944

Try ipconfig in a command window, does it show media disconnected for the wired interface with a cable plugged in?

Does the interface still exist in the device manager?

[#6]

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@jab1 wrote:

... it sounds like an issue with the Ethernet connection, but would be a bit of an expensive repair on a machine of that age, TBH.

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Rather than attempting to repair the motherboard,  it would only cost in the region of £10 to £20 to fit a new gigabit network card in a spare PCI slot.

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@Colpeper1944 wrote:

...  it’s suspicious that the status light changes from green to amber only when Windows is starting.

On most of my motherboards, at power-on when an ethernet connection is first established, the network port LED initially is green (indicating default speed 100Mbps),  but then later in the boot-up sequence when the operating system (in my case Linux) takes control of the connection, the LED changes to amber (indicating 1Gbps speed), presumably determined by the previously configured network settings.

Have you tried moving the ethernet plug (at the router end) to a different socket on the router ?  -  In over 20 years, I've had ethernet ports stop working on at least three routers,  so swapping sockets might be a simple no-cost fix (if it works).

[#7]

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@Colpeper1944 wrote:
 it’s suspicious that the status light changes from green to amber only when Windows is starting.

Which status light - on the Hub/router?

[#8]

@Dan_the_Van There are 2 devices listed under Network Adapters, both shown as working, but don’t know if either relate to the Ethernet port. They are “Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller” and “TAP-Windows Adapter v9”

[#9]

@jab1 I meant the motherboard socket light, but @Anonymous may have already explained the reason for the colour change happening when it does, in a reply above.

[#10]

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@Colpeper1944 wrote:

... the Ethernet connection to my old PC goes down a few moments after Windows 7 starts up.

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What are you seeing that makes you think that ?  (other than it doesn't work once Windows has started)

Is the ethernet port LED still amber when you don't have a connection ?

[#11]

@Anonymous Thanks for your suggestions. I did try the other router sockets, to no avail, and the network is working when I plug the cable into my laptop, so pretty sure the router (which is only about 3 months old) is ok.

I might try your suggestion of a new network card, because it’s not worth spending much on this PC. Had just hoped for a little more life out of it before total replacement.

[#12]

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'@@Colpeper1944 wrote:
@jab1 I meant the motherboard socket light, but @Anonymous may have already explained the reason for the colour change happening when it does, in a reply above.

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OK, wasn't obvious from the post. Anyway, I'll leave this to @Anonymous  / @Dan_the_Van  - hardware is slightly out of my comfort zone.

[#13]

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@jab1 wrote:

Anyway, I'll leave this to @Anonymous  / @Dan_the_Van  - hardware is slightly out of my comfort zone.

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Unfortunately  Windows  is something I can't help with (without a lot of Googling) - I moved to Linux from Windows XP in 2007.

However I'm not convinced that this hardware is broken.

If windows is saying “Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller” is "working"

and assuming the ethernet port is continuing to show an amber LED after Windows has started, 

then I would say the hardware is probably OK.

I would next look at whether DHCP was able to assign a dynamic IP address, to see whether Windows communicated with the router and fetched the network settings from the router.

It might also be worth trying rebooting the router, in case it has done something odd with the Windows-7 PC's ethernet MAC address, relating to DHCP or an IPv4 address clash with another connected device, etc..

[#14]

I would suggest running ipconfig -all in command window

To open a cmd window >Windows key +R type CMD click OK

Dan

[#15]

OK, @Anonymous . I've also moved over to Linux - but only in the last couple of years. 😉

As I said though, hardware is not my area - I used to leave that to my sisters other half until they split up, now I would probably seek professional help - should I need it.