Windows 7 Nforce ethernet problems - please help.

winstainforth

New Member
After getting windows 7 to work on my laptop I've installed build 7000 on my primary computer.

Everything is fine except that it won't detect my network adapter hardware. It doesn't show up at all in the divice manager. I have a nvidia Nforce 680i motherboard.

I've installed the latest nforce drivers in vista compatibilty mode and as administrator. They installed but nothing happened.

I had a similar problem with the video drivers in my laptop and windows update found and installed the drivers. Didn't work this time.

I've hooked my N95 phone upto the computer and have accessed the internet without any problems, very puzzled?

Thanks for any help.
 
After getting windows 7 to work on my laptop I've installed build 7000 on my primary computer.

Everything is fine except that it won't detect my network adapter hardware. It doesn't show up at all in the divice manager. I have a nvidia Nforce 680i motherboard.

I've installed the latest nforce drivers in vista compatibilty mode and as administrator. They installed but nothing happened.

I had a similar problem with the video drivers in my laptop and windows update found and installed the drivers. Didn't work this time.

I've hooked my N95 phone upto the computer and have accessed the internet without any problems, very puzzled?

Thanks for any help.
Sounds like you need a windows 7 compatible driver. Is the Ethernet port built onto the motherboard or built onto and external card like PCI or something ?
 
Yes, it's built into the motherboard.
ok well i have to say that you should wait for a driver for windows 7 to come out. The only other thing i can think that it could be is that the port doesnt work anymore and you need to replace it.
 
Try doing a manual install.
7 might not like the software install, and might take the drivers directly from within the control panel/dev mgr/update driver method.
It worked for my CoProcessor and Video Card.
 
Download the drivers.
Open control panel.
Go to Device Manager.
Select the item you wish to install drivers to.
Right click.
Update Driver.
Point the program to the driver file that you downloaded (The extracted version, can't be packaged)
Let it install the driver, ignore all warnings.
Restart.
 
Problem solved. The network controler didn't show up in device manager until I right clicked and hit the "scan for hardware changes" button.

Very happy indeed.
 
Aw ok congratulations. It should of showed up though as an unidentified device that is kinda weird. Oh well problem solved.
 
I am having this same problem. Here are my details.

I have an nForce 2 chipset mobo. The latest drivers are 5.10 for XP, however they work in Vista. They do NOT work in 7. I have also tried the 7.x branch for XP and the latest nForce 15.x branch for Vista, even though they do not support nForce 2 officially. Neither improved my situation.

I've also tried all the stuff in this thread and others with no luck.

Device Manager complains the driver cannot start (error code 10). I have checked the appropriate Microsoft KB articles and they are useless. The built-in troubleshooter in the network tray icon is useless, as well as in the Devices and Printers menu.

Error Log contains no warnings, errors, or critical errors about the driver that I can tell.

I started the driver myself using sc.exe. It runs. And yet Device Manager still complains it won't start, even as it is running. The driver doesn't stop or crash, which should mean it's working... but I can't use it.

I have tried uninstalling the device completely and reinstalling it both using the nVidia installer as well as directly installing the drivers using the Update Driver wizard. I tried both methods using all three versions of the driver.

The last thing I have yet to try is a suggestion from someone to use a program called DriverMax to export the driver from my working XP install of the driver, and import it into 7. I am not optimistic about this solution (and I'm not sure it's worth the trouble to try ATM, next time I happen to boot into it I will).

Waiting for proper Windows 7 drivers is not an option since I'm still waiting for proper Vista drivers.

Other non-working devices include a PCI Simple Communication device or something (I forget the name, and I'm not rebooting just to check) which is probably my modem, and some other stuff for my TV tuner. I don't care about them right now.

What really gets me mad is that no Windows OS properly installs my ethernet driver automatically... it always has to be done manually, so if I forgot to download the drivers before reinstalling I've got to jump through tons of hoops just to GET the drivers. Ubuntu, on the other hand, works out of the box, both from the live CD and from an install. In fact, every Linux distro live CD I've tried works out of the box. I skipped Vista, and my ethernet driver WORKED in that. If I can't get 7 to work I'll probably skip that and just go to Jaunty, which at least works.

Also I'm still not done fixing the damage the install DVD did to my bootloaders. Got grub back up but it can't properly chainload since Windows 7 destroyed all the pre-7 bootloaders I was chainloading to.

It did something weird to my DVD-ROM drive too, I can't read one of my DVD-RWs anymore. Worked fine before I booted into Windows 7 and copied files off of it, worked fine when I stuck it in another computer. Tried cleaning it, still doesn't work. WTF is that about.
 
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I have the same problem.
I installed Windows 7 on an nForce4 SLI computer, and this stupid Windows does not recognize my ethernet.
I have tried installing all kinds of drivers, but nothing works.
I tried doing what you did (Scan for hardware changes), but no success.
I tried manually installing the .inf files.
Nothing works :/

Any idea?
 
For all nForce2 owners (might work for 3 and 4, test it and post results), get this driver Nvidia Unified (nforce 2|3|4) 8.22 (v5) download from Guru3D.com

i have an ABIT NFS-7 v2. installed 7 beta 1 yesterday, ethernet drivers didnt work.

googled my ass off, found this. it worked, can you imagine the happiness? so now i'm sharing the happiness! haha!

fully working Windows 7 on a crap pc, 1.9ghz althon, 1gb ram, 720gb hdd, i scored 2.0 WEI and yep, full functionality and its actually quite responsive compared to vista :)

hope this driver works for u guys too :)
 
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Awesome, worked like a charm, thanks cjoey!

thebigredone, what I did is this, try it:

1) Find the device in Device Manager, right click, Uninstall, check remove drivers.
2) Run the 8.22 installer, select only to install the ethernet driver.
3) (Not sure if this is needed, I did it anyway) Right click device in device manager, update driver, point to the 8.22 extract folder (C:\nvidia\etc by default). Let it install the drivers this way.
4) Reboot, adapter won't work until you reboot.
 
I had this problem as well. I performed an upgrade from windows vista 64bit.
I then decided to format the system and do a clean install, now I have no problems and the operating system is as stable as Vista SP2... just faster.
 
I am having the exact same trouble the fact of it is that my network adapter won't even show up on device manager even after I click "scan for hardware changes," but if it makes any difference i am using the 64bit. Also when i tried to install the driver it screwed up my xp that I have on the same drive, different partition. Sense it did mess up the XP I decided to reformat and just have XP again, later I am going to buy a new hard drive and install windows 7 on that, Maybe that would make a difference?
 
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I tried to download the driver you guys were talking about and it didn't help. I'm not quite sure what to do next. I need My XP for internet, obviously i could always reformat again but, you know... I kinda want to try Windows 7 but it keeps fucking with my ethernet adapter, XP and 7 are also now on different Hard Drives so idk why it does this, it just doesnt make sense
 
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