ASRock Extreme4 Gen 3 - Ethernet ports not working, can't connect to Internet

[huffy]

Hey,

After building my PC, everything seems to be working fine apart from one thing. I can't connect to the Internet via Ethernet. For some reason my computer doesn't recognize the Ethernet cord I plugged in. There aren't any lights or anything. I noticed someone else posted here a couple of hours ago with a similar problem, but mine is a bit different. Unlike him, the Ethernet controller shows up for me in device manager, listed as Broadcom NetLink (TM) Gigabit Ethernet. I am positive that the cord is working as I've tried it on another computer, but I also tried using different cords with no luck. I decided to use my USB dongle thingy which lets me connect to my modem wirelessly, but I cannot put up with such low Internet speeds :(

Anyone know how I could possibly fix this? Or do you think it's an issue with the board? I'm downloading the driver from the ASRock website to see if that might fix this problem but I doubt it will. I'll report back when I try it out.

Thanks in advance :)

[electric bill]

Re: ASRock Extreme4 Gen 3 - Ethernet ports not working, can't connect to Internet

Anyone know how I could possibly fix this? Or do you think it's an issue with the board? I'm downloading the driver from the ASRock website to see if that might fix this problem but I doubt it will.

Why don't you think it will work?
You might also consider trying the latest driver from Broadcom for the BCM57781 here.

Bill

[huffy]

Re: ASRock Extreme4 Gen 3 - Ethernet ports not working, can't connect to Internet

Why don't you think it will work?

The driver on the site is the same one which comes with the driver disc, so I was pretty sure it wouldn't work. Anyway, 20 hours later and I still haven't gotten it to work. I've tried atleast 5 different drivers and even reinstalled Windows 7 completely with no luck.

[electric bill]

Re: ASRock Extreme4 Gen 3 - Ethernet ports not working, can't connect to Internet

The reason I suggested going to Broadcom for the driver is that the Realtek LAN on my 970 Extreme3 was very slow in Win 7 and didn't work at all in Linux.
Rather than RMA the board I used an Intel PCIe EXPI9301CTBLK Network Adapter until I could sort things out.
One day I tried the latest Realtek drivers (from Realtek) for Windows and Linux and found that I could remove the Intel adaptor.
Apparently ASRock just throws together drivers to get a new product out the door - like they did with UEFI.
Just to be clear I'm not suggesting that you try to use Realtek drivers - just using my situation as an example.

You may want to try using a discrete card instead of going through the hassle of RMAing the board.
Or not.

Bill

[Donthuis]

Re: ASRock Extreme4 Gen 3 - Ethernet ports not working, can't connect to Internet

A temporary separate LAN-board on PCI-basis is even cheaper. Anywhere between € 5-10, will get you one with 100Mb/s speed (I would not know the Australian Pound Equivalent). For Gigabit cards PCIE-1 solutions are better, but more expensive. Recently I had to use a saparate LAN-card to restore Internet acces after lightning damaged the LAN-circuitry, without any indication in the hardware overview. Such failures are not always visible to the eye or in software. Device manager still reported the LAN-port as fully functional. This may also be the case for you.... Just do this hardware check first, before expecting the remedy from better drivers, is my advice :-D on