Seeking help from a resident geek
 

I've got myself into a bit of a mess with my PC. Last week, it developed a fault that it would turn off instead of hibernating and then it refused to boot up, with the power to switching itself on and off intermittently. When I removed the lead from the power supply unit to the motherboard the light on the power supply unit stayed on so I deduced that it was a fault with the motherboard or one of the components on it.

The remedy suggested to me was to get another PC and move my hard drive over. I've done that (and also moved my graphics card and V90 modem) and re-activated windows. However, I'm at a loss as to why there is no Broadband connection, despite the cable from my router going into the right socket and there being a green light on. For info, I've moved from a HP t430.uk to a HP Compaq D530 tower.

Am I missing any physical components or perhaps do I just need some drivers? Another solution perhaps is to get an external HDD (which I was going to get anyway for backups), copy my key files or the whole hard drive, and start again on the 'new' PC after putting it back to the way it was when I got it.

Any advice on the easiest way to get a fully functioning PC will be greatly appreciated

when the ethernet cable is plugged in does your pc tell you there is limited or no connectivity? or does nothing happen at all?

if nothing happens then it would suggest you have some missing drivers, otherwise it may be an IP address problem, has this new pc been used to connect to the internet before?

The 'new' PC has been used for the Internet before I think. There are no messages, but there is nothing appearing in Network Connections window where I would expect to see 'LAN or High-Speed Internet'.

ok well that sounds like a driver problem, have a look at your device master, within system in the control panel and see if the ehternet controller has a yellow explanation mark on it, if so you may need to download the driver on another machine and transfer it accross with usb pen or similar, once this is installed then everthing should right itself

Did you do a fresh install of windows?

your mb driver will be set to the old board, and may conflict or not work at all with the new mb


mart

XP or Vista? Vista is supposedly good at coping with this sort of scenario, but XP tends to go sulk in a corner and not want to talk to anyone, or it throws a tantrum and lies on it's back kicking and screaming. As others have suggested it's likely to be a driver issue, use another PC to download the network card drivers and install them on the Frankenputer. Once it's back on the 'Net you can then download all the other drivers you need, and don't forget to Windows Update once you've finished.

All sorted now - thanks for your help.

I put the new hard drive back in the new PC, made a note of the name of the 2 bits of hardware which were the issue, swapped the hard drive back, downloaded the correct drivers on another PC, transferred via memory stick to the old hard drive in the new PC and hey presto it worked. Also found time to buy an external HDD and do a proper back up of my files.

:thumb: Glad you're sorted.