NIC totally disappeared from windows

Hey guys,

Apparently, last night when I was out my brother was on my dads computer playing music or something and this morning my dads computer wont go online.
He told he asked my brother what he did and he said he just put the computer to sleep....

I was awoken nice and early to fix it -.-

The NIC is not in the device list...I tried reinstalling the motherboard drivers and it still does not work.
The light on the back of the NIC is on...so it isn't disabled (checked BIOS too)

What is going on ? Any ideas?

Thanks, ps2cho

I ended up giving my dad my old PCI NIC card for the time being as he needs to get online...

This is a weird one...
My brother said that he put it into sleep via the keyboard...and it wouldnt start up again, so he turned it off by the button and restarted.

NICs sometimes just die. I've had two NICs(one onboard) die on me before. So if it's plugged in properly and it doesn't show up in Device Manager, or if it is onboard and doesn't show up in Device Manager, then it is most likely dead. Also doesn't show up as Unknown Device. After a couple restarts, reseating, changing PCI slot, you can pretty much just consider it dead. They cost like $10 nowadays anyways.

Yeh it doesn't show up in the Device manager...Could be Windows though, or the keyboard has done something...
But for $10, it's probably not worth doing a full reinstall.

Thing is that the lights when the CAT5 is plugged in, blink...but theres nothing in windows. Is there any program that can kinda..."see" if there is a NIC in the system? As I cannot rely on Window's Device Manager to tell me this..

I think there are a couple programs, but I think they would be just as reliable as Device Manager as when Device Manager sees something plugged in, but doesn't know what it is it will set it as Unknown Device. If it is dead, then Device Manager often won't even show it being there.

Both of the times when my NIC and onboard NIC died they both had lights blinking. They both did not show up in Device Manager. I actually replaced a netgear NIC with the exact same netgear NIC that I had laying around and that worked. So it was definitely dead.