SP4 or critial security upgrades disabled my NIC

[danbpc]

I have a new AMD 2400 with an asrock motherboard. 512 mb ram. I am running win 2000 sp3. I got a message from microsoft that said I should update.

I did, and I regret it.

SP4 or one of several critial security upgrades has disabled my on motherboard NIC. I know this because when I boot up the computer tells me that the network connection is down. I also went looking for disabled drivers in my system control panel, and the communcitions driver is disabled and I can not get it to restore.

I took my box to my local pc shop and they said they ran it to this problem before and they ended up re installing the OS. is there another solution?

dan

 

[substitute]

If you're sure it was an update that knocked it out the obvious move is to work through the updates and uninstall them on-by-one until it works again. Go into Control Panel / add remove programs and you should see SP4 and any post-SP4 hotfixes listed.

The SP generally loads as an exclusive item before any other hotfixes so you should see all the stuff you loaded available to uninstall.

If you read the associated KB or Q number on Microsoft's support website you may be able to work out which fix affected the NIC. It is unlikely it was SP4 itself.

Failing that, check your motherboard manufacturer's website for downloadable drivers. Any update to the ones that came with the board should install OK.

 

[danbpc]

thank you for your response. It is too logical to be able to undo what was done. I'll try it. However I am more used to the Microsoft Black Box approach to playing with the OS. eg when it fails start over.