wont recognize onboard NIC..or anythign else..

my computer no longer recognizes my onboard NIC. i go to device manager and see that the NIC now has an exclamation point next to it, and not only that, the icon for it is not a network card but an unknown device(which is a little gray diamond). i un-installed and re-installed several times, both in safe mode, safemode with networking, and regular. each time it says it was installed properly and i need to reboot to take affects. once i reboot i get the same problem. when i check out the card, it says "this device is not working properly... windows was unable to load the drivers for this device. code(31)" i check the driver details, it says c:\windows\system32\drivers\rtl8139.sys which is exactly as it should be. i manually check to see if that file is there, and it is.

i then went and bought a PCI slot NIC, installed it from the cd, and i get the same result. whats scary is that the device type is still unknown. then i took a wireless nic out of a working pc on my home network, and put it in the broken pc, and get the same exact result. but it was not even recognized as a network device on my broken pc. i noticed it uses the same drivers on both pc's. i confirmed this using driver details, yet on the broken pc it says it could not load the drivers code 31.

in conclusion, im not even sure if its hardware or software. i cant figure out why it wont recognize any network adapter i install, and why it says it cant load the drivers for it when the drivers are right where they should be.

any insight is appreciated

 

Sounds like a resource conflict. Do you have a card in pci slot1?
If you do try removing it. Slot 1 and onboard nic usually share the same IRQ. This used to happen a lot with Windows 9x. While rare for it to happen in XP it does happen when you have to devices using the same irq that are incompatible with each other.

 

prior to putting in the pci NIC, i had nothing in my PCI slots, only a video card in the agp slot. i took your comment into note however and removed the pci NIC and un-installed and re-installed the onboard NIC with nothing in the pci slots. i went ahead and checked the irq assignments by going to device manager > view > resources by type, and saw that there was no assignment for the NIC at all for the card. on my working pc it was on PCI(21). im not really sure what this means however...

any further insight is still appreciated

 

OK. Try going into bios and disable the onboard nic. Then boot into Windows and remove the nic from device manager. Shutdown, complete shutdown not restart. Start it again and head back in bios and eneable it. Boot to Windows. Windows should reinstall it and it should work. If that doesn't work then it is possible you have a problem with the motherboard.

 

Pardon the intrusion... I found this thread in an MSN search and I'm having exactly the same problem! Unlike other issues I've found, this one seems current and not so "stale," so I'd like other people's opinion and see if anyone else may have had this same problem.

I'm usually the expert that fixes these types of issues, but I've run into this issue now for the second time with Code 31 on NICs. I've run into this with an onboard NIC with a Dell and now most recently with an OEM PCI NIC in a Gateway. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling drivers (even going so far as to remove them from the registry to the extent that I can), tried WinSock repairs (see http://community.middlebury.edu/~pmitrevs/static.php?page=static041216-234118), etc. Tried disabling, renabling.

Ultimately, my "solution" with the Dell PC after about 2 hours of researching and trying stuff (an hour of that on the phone with Dell tech support) was to wipe the drive clean and reload Windows XP Professional from scratch! After a reload, no Code 31 or any other problems!

Other factors: It was Service Pack 2 at the time, up to date with all critical and recommended updates. There were no unusual programs or data; Symantec Antivirus Corporate was installed and up-to-date. No spyware or viruses were found after the fact. I tried installing a second network Card.. a standard known-working D-link and that turned up with a Code 31 as well. All low-level BIOS bios based and high-level software based tests reported no problems with the onboard network card (no known problems whatsoever with resource conflicts, etc.). I tried making some reasonable adjustments to the BIOs settings, but that didn't help either. I of course tried a Windows XP System Recovery back to a date when the NIC was in fact working. I tried a recovery install of WinXP. Nothing worked.

My fear is that there is an obvious fix for this solution somewhere and I'll be wasting time reinstalling Windows every time I encounter this issue. Would love some feedback from someone who might have some more insight. Thanks!

 

Okay, I've been communicating directly with Microsoft tech support on this and will post updates as soon as I get them.