Alright a lot of things have just happened, and even though I'm a bit pressed for time I'll make this post so you guys can have something to think about.
I loaded my laptop and it TEMPORARILY had internet via the ethernet port. I knew this was a bit too good to be true so I instinctively went to check it out a bit. My ethernet is now back to its not working state.
Here's what I found out:
- Router had that orange light to indicate that connection for my ethernet port (now it doesn't)
-Device Manager > Network Adapters had...
--Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100 AGN (this was here before as well)
--Microsoft Virtual WiFi Miniport Adapter (this wasn't there before, but even after my ethernet stopped working again it's still there)
--Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller (this one previously had that yellow triangle with "!", now briefly while ethernet was working didn't have the triangle)
- I managed to quickly peek at the version number of the Realtek driver from Device Manager and found it was different (for example, this one had *.2011 at the end. In my previous post I noted that the version number ended with *.2009). I didn't write it down, since the ethernet disappeared just as suddenly it came...
After this:
-the internet connection disappeared and I checked back into device manager and the ethernet driver has disappeared as well after right clicking "Scan for hardware changes"
My thoughts:
-the ethernet driver has updated, but when the port is working my driver is visible from Device Manager otherwise it isn't. In my post above, it is likely that the yellow triangle appeared because the computer couldn't detect the driver. I'm willing to bet that if I had "scanned for hardware changes" that driver would have disappeared as well.
My laptop model is:HP HDX X16T-1200 CTO Premium Notebook PC (this is straight from HP website)