Windows 10: Windows 10 PC no longer recognizes ethernet cable / Ethernet network adapter drivers missing

I have a PC that I keep connected to Ethernet via a 100ft cable that snakes up to the wifi extender upstairs it's not inside the wall or anything, it literally goes across my room, under my door, and up the stairs because the wifi in my room is spotty at best and gives me terrible ~0.5mbps lag spikes in the evenings.Yesterday my area had an awful thunderstorm that caused my power to surge and the Verizon internet "box" not sure what its called, I think it enables the coax cable connected to the router in the basement to blow. No issue, Verizon came today to fix it. Not entirely sure what t

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Ethernet Adapter Won't Recognize Ethernet Cable

We have a Dell all in one touch screen computer and we want to connect our modem to it. However I noticed that the connection icon on the right bottom hand side doesn't indicate that there is a wired connection.

So I went to the network adapters page and it says "network cable unplugged" even though the ethernet cable is in there. I thought the ethernet cable might be the problem even though it was working fine for the other computer. So we switched it out and the
computer still won't recognize that an ethernet cord has been plugged in.

Then I used my mobile hotspot to install the latest driver for the ethernet port and it installed. The driver date went from 4/2/2015 to 5/2/2015. I restarted the computer and tried both ethernet cords again and same result. So then to be sure it was the
computer I put the ethernet linking the modem to my laptop and my laptop recognized the wired connection.

So it's not the cords or the modem, it's the computer. But I can't figure out how to fix it and I find it hard to believe that this is a hardware problem given that this computer is fairly new.

The OS is Windows 10 and the Ethernet Adapter says Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller.





If our computer can't recognize ethernet cords we can't use our modem...

 

Computer not recognizing Ethernet cable

Hi Vijay, I appreciate your help.

I will try each step even if I've already done it, just to make sure, and post my results.

A. When I troubleshoot internet connections, it tells me “Plug an ethernet cable into this computer” and says my cable might be broken or disconnected. However of course i have tried a different working cable with no luck.

when I troubleshoot network adapter, it says “plug an Ethernet cable into the network adapter ‘Ethernet’” which of course has already been done so it is not recognizing it.

B. I tried every suggestion/step listed (except for the wifi troubleshooting since my computer doesn't have wifi) and none of them worked.

C. When I run the windows update troubleshooter, it tells me “download and install pending updates” (Maybe it is not up to date because I tried reinstalling windows 10 to see if that would fix the internet, but it did not. I updated it like last week or
something like that) but of course I can't download the updates without internet. If I click “apply this fix” it tells me to plug in an Ethernet cable. But i believe windows 10 was up to date before this issue even began because I updated it just a week ago.

D. I do not understand this step. The guide is confusing to me. It also appears that I have to download tools in order to do this repair. I cannot download anything because my computer cannot connect to the internet. I don't have a USB flashdrive. I did
try reinstalling Windows 10 though and it did not help.

 

Ethernet cable getting recognized only after uninstalling and re-installing the ethernet driver

Hello all. I have a laptop which came with Windows 11 installed. At first there were no issues but for the past week my Ethernet cable does not get recognized by my laptop. Following the steps I have seen here in similar questions, I unplug my cable, uninstall the Ethernet driver from the Device Manager, Scan for hardware changes (driver gets installed automatically), plug the Ethernet cable and everything works fine. Next time I open my computer the Ethernet might or might not get recognized. I have to do this task almost every time I open my computer. Any suggestions?