Ethernet working but not working? At an absolute loss.
My MSI motherboard recently had an audio issue and crashed/corrupted my PC.
I RMA'd it and did a fresh install of windows.
I fire up my PC - no internet. After some fiddle-fucking around, I try an Ethernet to USB-C adapter. Works fine.
I try a wifi dongle, no issues.
Okay, motherboard issue related to the Ethernet port then, right?
Except, I plug my Ethernet cable directly into my modem, and now it's working totally fine.
Hmm, router issue? But why is it working with the usb-C adapter? Why does it work when I plug it into my steam deck? Factory reset. No dice.
Drivers updated, windows updated, everything has been disabled, re-enabled, reset, turned off and back on, etc. I'm losing my mind.
I would really like to be able to plug my expensive PC directly into my router via Ethernet, but I can't seem to make it happen. Tried two different cables (which work with other devices).
When I connect, it says it's identifying network and then gives me a 169 IP address - DHPS error then? But why wouldn't that be resolved by the clean install and the factory reset?
Everything is set to auto in terms of IP and DHPS. Everything is enabled as it should be. No firewall. No security. No blacklisted devices. Why won't my router assign an IP address to my PC when connected directly via Ethernet? And why is it working fine when connected to my modem?
msi motherboard and TP-link router by the way.
Edit: Alright folks, I'm just going to squeeze in a network card. I don't want to do another three weeks with no PC and this mobo is just old enough that I don't feel like RMA'ing repeatedly unless I have to. I really tried everything and have ruled out the router and Ethernet cable. Thank you all so much for your help.
Edit: Threw a new network card in. Used my second PCIEx16 slot. Nothing will fit there anyway since it's microatx and my gpu takes up so much space. Working great. So probably the mobo having an ethernet defect - not terribly surprising considering this was just RMA'd and they sent me back the same mobo after repair. If it shits the bed again, I'll just get a new mobo entirely. it's not an expensive one luckily. Thanks again everyone!
first things first, run a live boot of some flavor of linux to see if its hardware or software related.
On my list of things to try after mother's Day brunch! Thank you!
pretty much any time something goes wrong, live boot to see if it’s persistent.
i like using ubuntu or endeavour (arch, but all set up)
I would still try with a brand new cable TBH. Perhaps the one's you got are fine for one device but not the other for some reason. Cables are weird.
I'll give this a shot. But these are also the cables that worked totally fine with this exact PC before I RMA'd the mobo. Does that change your thinking at all? And thanks for the reply.
Your knowledge greatly surpass mine. I'm just a regular dude who knows cables are weird sorry :P
Verify that the routers’ DHCP pool isn’t exhausted.
See if you’re able to set MSS or the TX-speed manually.
Have you tried using different ports? Restarting the router? Swapping router?
Ftr. DHCP is a service running on the router, so reinstalling a client wouldn’t necessarily fix issues, depending on where the issue is.
All good ideas. Will try later today. Thank you!
Also try setting a manual IP then verify that your traffic is routed as expected. Could isolate the issue to something related to (or at least affecting) DHCP.
Do you have any experience with Wireshark? Starting a packet capture then plugging the cable in will at least tell you if your NIC is seeing inbound traffic.
I don't! I'll look into it.
I know your answer is that you don't want to RMA the board, but just to add a counter thought (because obviously it's your computer and you should do what ever you want). I'd caution you against not RMAing the new board despite the inconvenience of being without a motherboard for a couple weeks. If this board shipped with a bad Ethernet port or chip, you have no way to know if something else is wrong and it may have come from another defective batch. You know it's an issue now so why wait and run a higher risk of the board just dieing but only after your out of your warranty period?
On the other hand, if you do want to run an extension to your PCIe slot to connect an Ethernet card, I saw a couple weeks ago you can get full PCIe extension cables. Looks like they're designed specifically for small cases, but that's probably a totally viable option to get under your GPU. Only came across it while trying to figure out if I could ever add an extension under my own GPU that's covering the extra PCIe slot.
Typically I would agree with you. But honestly, it's a cheap(ish) micro ATX mobo. By the time I pay for shipping a second time, I'm halfway to the price of another comparable mobo.
Also, it's three years old. I'm already out of warranty. They only RMA'd it because it was their BIOS update that caused the issue in the first place.
But yeah! I got a riser cable and network card..
Just to share in the misery, I booted my computer today and my built in WiFi and Bluetooth devices won't show up in Windows. I haven't had the time to troubleshoot if it's actually a board failure, or if windows update broke something. But yeah, gotta love motherboards just deciding to partially give up the ghost for no good reason. 🥲
What chipset is the motherboard’s onboard Ethernet using? In my experience anything that’s not Intel is likely to be flaky and have weird problems in this vein, sometimes enough that it makes sense to grab a cheap Intel PCI-E Ethernet add-in card and use that instead of onboard. I would recommend against USB adapters for long term use.
Realtek. I am considering a new Ethernet card but it's blocked by graphics card (had to do microatx for this build for various space-related reasons). I would need to do some screwing around to sneak a cable under the graphics card I suppose.
I’d absolutely be in the same “I need answers, goddammit” headspace about this, but from a purely pragmatic perspective if you’ve already got a USB-C adapter that works it’s probably a decent option to just keep using that. For normal home networking anything that uses USB 3 or above isn’t going to be anywhere close to a bottleneck, they’re dirt cheap, and it saves on needing to reshuffle the internals and worry about risers or GPU airflow or anything like that.
My beef with USB adapters is how spotty USB 3 and newer have such a tendency to be. Across multiple computers and peripherals over the years on all OSes I’ve had countless times where USB devices will just blink out for a beat or two for no good reason.
I guess I've been lucky, because that would drive me mad! I've had a cheap RTL8156-based NIC hooked up to my laptop for years now (via a USB hub in the monitor, so one extra hop, too) and it's never had a blip. Honestly I was expecting that one to be a temporary stopgap because I've had problems with Realtek in the past, but it's just kept working.
I've had surprisingly solid performance tunnelling random PCIe devices directly over USB 4 via an ASMedia ASM2464PDX chip as well, but that's definitely more niche than most people will reasonably need.
The downside of this is that my computer was a COVID build that had to be micro-atx to fit available space. In other words, my options were limited and I ended up with a (gorgeous, incredible) PC case that has only one usb-C port. I have packed every other usb port and added a USB hub already.
I'll admit, I don't know much about USB in general. But my intuition tells me I'm already pushing it with the number of USB devices and I don't want to lose my only USB-C port as I do use it for other things.
I am also anxious that I just RMA'd this mobo and it may still have issues. I just don't want this to be the first failure in a long line of failures yet to come. I might just end up connecting a slim cable to my pcie port and sneaking it under the GPU to add an Ethernet port. May take some more fiddling but I don't worry too much about airflow. My case is mesh and I have been super impressed by how cool this thing stays. Ugh. Thanks!
I also have some obsessive compulsive tendencies probably related to my ADHD
My build if you're interested:
https://pcpartpicker.com/b/yHrrxr
Totally fair on all counts, particularly the concerns about it being a sign of further issues with the warranty replacement board. I've spent the better part of a month chasing down similarly weird issues with PCIe riser cables, so my bias there is probably showing, but for something relatively straightforward like adding a single card you should realistically be fine there!
Since you're using so much USB already, if you're planning to add a PCIe card anyway it might actually be more useful to you to add something like this rather than a network card? Gives you somewhere to plug in the known-working NIC as well as a bunch more devices as needed. (No experience with that card in particular, just an example of one that fits what came to mind - assuming 5Gbps shared between the ports is enough for you)
Right there with you, and "this answer feels indefinably wrong" is totally understandable reasoning for whatever option appeals to you as far as I'm concerned! Looks like a great build either way, so hopefully you get it back up and running as you want it soon.
[Edit] Clarity
Seconded. There are a lot of great PCIe cards out there to make up for a lack of Ethernet ports, usb headers, RGB ports and more out there. It makes the inside of the case a little more congested, but it'll enhance what you can do.
Another thing to try when troubleshooting like this is to unplug everything except the bare minimum of monitor, keyboard, mouse and in this case network adapter. Sometimes you get weird driver conflicts or power issues and this can help narrow it down.
I had a similar issue many years ago that was caused by bad firmware on the NIC. Updating the firmware resolved it.
What does it show in the status in the network settings (on your Windows PC but can also likely be seen in TP-link settings too) for link speed the port is negotiating at when connected to the modem and then what does it show when connected to the router? In theory auto negotiation defaults to lower speeds when it cannot negotiate at higher link speeds but it could indicate possibly a pin issue in the NIC of the motherboard if the modem is negotiating at 100mbps and the router is something different, especially if the modem technically supports a gigabit link.
Since 8p8c ethernet connections do not necessarily require all 8 wires to work, I've noticed there can be inconsistencies with how some devices work or do not work when some of the pins aren't making a connection. You can try messing with link speed settings on the ethernet port as a troubleshooting step, instead of letting it auto-negotiate, obviously if there's a physical defect you may not wish to use any possible solutions found here to compensate, but it may help narrow down the issue as it takes two devices to communicate and quirks can exist on both sides to cause something that may not have occurred before with another device.
Edit: Also just thought to mention, may want to confirm if you've tried other ports on the TP link router or only one port. I know you said the cables worked fine before, and perhaps they did and perhaps its not the cables, but its worth noting that unplugging the cable when you had to replace the motherboard could have resulted in damage to the ethernet cable or to the pins inside the ports, or there could have been possibly damage already that was merely being held in place by things that weren't moving until you had to disconnect the wires in the first place. It's all highly unlikely, but someone somewhere experiences the highly unlikely things while everyone else might resolve their issue through the most likely things, and it could just be your turn to be the someone somewhere on the unlikely side.
So, I tried adjusting the negotiating speeds last night and no dice. At one point it said (in router settings) that the LAN network was connected at 10mbps.
I tried other ports. Guess I'll try an old router I have laying around later today. Maybe another cable as well. Worth a shot.
I'm assuming it's the mobo since it was just RMA'd. I guess I'm hoping to avoid going another three weeks with no computer.
It would be interesting to know if windows shows the link speed as 10mbps when connected to the modem. It does seem likely that it's the port on the mobo based on what you've done so far. There's probably a pin or two that isn't making a connection on the board, and thats why it can inconsistently make a connection with your other devices.
Tried another router and no luck. Seems to be mobo or windows.
Is your router filtering out the MAC prefix of the mobo?
Maybe try a previous version of the mobo network driver instead of the latest version
Will give this a shot after mother's day celebrations are over!
This is weird.
Can you try rebooting to the Rescue mode, launch cmd and try pinging something from there to narrow down between (HW or driver) vs. (software or configuration)?
If (HW or driver), procees to use live Linux to determine HW vs. Windows.
I just grabbed a new network card from Amazon. Threw it into my second PCIE x16 slot (not like anything else is going to fit in there with my micro atx build) and it's working great.
I think it's the mobo. Probably obvious anyway considering I just got it back from RMA. Realistically I should probably RMA it again but I can't go another three weeks with no pc since I have a fair amount of computer work to do at home in the next few weeks. Plus, they make you pay for shipping and for this particular motherboard a second round of shipping would put me at half the cost of the mobo anyway. If it shits the bed again, I'll just get another mobo. Whatever.
Thanks though!
Onboard NICs are quite often the cheapest they could get their hands on. I am sorry you lost in the lottery.
one thing you can try is asking them if you can buy the same mobo and have them refund you once they receive your board and its accepted for RMA. I've done this with monitors and other things in the past and they can usually figure it out.
Wouldn’t be able to ping anything without a valid IP-address though. DHCP client isn’t getting an address and I don’t think setting a static address worked either, unless I missed something.
Rescue mode in Windows does not share lease database and probably has an older driver. It's basically booting up a different, clean system and checking from there.
I had a similar issue and had to reboot both the switch I was using as well as my modem/router. Sometimes just rebooting all the things is helpful.
Rebooted everything several times. Even factory reset.
This could help:
Renew IP just sits there and does nothing. It's trying but nothing happens. Also tried flush and all the other usual suspects in the cmd
Is your Mobo port set to a Static IP for some reason?
Not that I can see. BIOS has it all set to auto.
Maybe it’s something at the Windows level? Can other devices talk with the router?
Yes, others can.
It's probably the hardware (seems the most obvious), but...
Do you use any vpn? What network interfaces do you have or have had installed in windows since your fresh installation? And I'm assuming the fresh installation was on a fresh empty volume and no backups of anything windows-related were restored by the way.
(Ignore this line of questioning if you already tried linux.)
I do use a VPN from to time, but just through the Nord app. Nothing on the router.
I factory reset the router and fresh installed windows. Nothing.
I had to completely wipe my drive. When the mobo failed the first time, I attempted a bios update just to make sure and it apparently corrupted my entire drive. I was completely unable to recover anything from my ssd on this pc. I could have looked into recovering it in another pc file by file, but to be honest anything important is in the cloud. I pretty much lost mods and software. And the vast majority were mostly unused. Nothing major.
I was asking because windows has a habit of randomly recreating network interfaces and leaving garbage invisible network interfaces in the system (software), which can sometimes cause issues, especially if you use multiple network interfaces such as that installed by a vpn client. But if you haven't installed the vpn client yet, then nevermind.
This is probably a bugged driver plus maybe buggy hardware, similar issue: https://www.sevenforums.com/network-sharing/391493-realtek-pcie-gbe-doesnt-see-dhcp-server.html
If this doesn't help, I'd try:
Disable power saving features in Device Manager (EEE, Green Ethernet, Automatic Turn Off etc.), including "Allow Windows to turn this device off" in the Power Management tab,
Try Realtek Generic drivers instead of motherboard specific or vice versa
Set NIC speed manually instead of Auto
Set Static IP
I attempted all of the above. No luck. Man, oh man.
I also tried a different router, no luck there either. Guess I'm going to try flashing bios and reinstalling Windows once more and then just RMA the thing.
If it's not the driver, I'd try changing your Ethernet MAC address. All of the devices you tried would have different MAC addresses and if there is a conflict on your network, plugging directly into the router would absolve it. It's worth a shot.
I'll give it a shot. Quick question, that would just change it through Windows right? The actual Mac address is programmed into the card itself?
Also, I did try a different router and that didn't work either. If it was an issue with the MAC address, would the other router not have resolved it?
Correct. The change would be temporary. It does sound like you just might have faulty hardware though, given all the other things you have tried in this thread. That was the only thing I could think of that hadn't been suggested.
Edit: I may have missed this but I didn't see it suggested so far. Have you updated your motherboard's firmware to the latest version?
Something is wrong with DHCP. First, try assigning a static IP to your Ethernet interface. If that works, you know that the problem is isolated to DHCP from your router for some reason.
Next, I'd try manually overriding the MAC address of your interface and swapping back to DHCP. If this works, you likely have some sort of DHCP exclusion for the MAC burned into your motherboard for some reason. You can just continue on with the manually set MAC address without any issues, or dig into the router to figure out what's causing this.
The fact that your computer gets an IP and network access when plugged into the modem proves there's nothing wrong with the network stack on your PC. The fact that the router works with an external interface proves that the router works fine. That means there's something specifically wrong with the interface interacting with the router, and the MAC address is the one major change there. (Could be other things too, but that's the most likely culprit)
I did all of these steps and none worked. Any other ideas? I added a network card to my my only remaining pcie x16 slot and that's working just fine. But it's a pretty tight fit near my GPU and I don't love how close it is to the fans.
Would love to use the motherboard's ethernet port.
Well, if a static IP didn't work (and you're sure the IP you chose doesn't have a conflict somewhere else on your network and the other settings are correct; ie gateway and subnet mask), that means DHCP is not your issue. (I'm assuming you tried to ping the routers IP and it didn't work. If not, try that.)
The only other thing I can think of besides damage, or some extremely strange software bug would be autonegotiation. Try manually setting the speed to 1000mbs and the duplex to full on both sides of the connection. Sometimes, rarely these days, autonegotiation fails and one end of the connection ends up being half duplex.
If that doesn't end up being your problem, I'd chalk it up to a bug or hardware failure.
Did all of that and more! I am calling it a hardware failure. Ah well. Thank you!
Try factory resetting the router before swapping in a new test unit. Perhaps it has some retained setting for your PCs MAC address. That could explain why it works when directly connected to the modem, and why it works with a dongle.
I did a factory reset, no dice.