Stupid Dell Broadcom Internal NIC Disabled
Did I say the other day that I like my Dell D630? Was I mentioning the awesome power of the dual core intel and the 2 gigs of RAM after using my bottom of the range G4 iBook.
Well I have one of two quibbles, the networking on this thing has made me more angry and caused me to swear more than anything I can think of. The wireless does seem a bit better since I upgraded the Intel ProSet thing. Like now it doesn’t just randomly drop out and then decide it can’t connect to anything unless I reboot.
I just spent the last two hours (which was going to be some nice relaxing DVD time) battling it out with the fricking piece of shite internal network card. I need an internal network card to be able to copy stuff off a certain computer at home – actually I can do it wirelessly but the network is way faster for certain large files.
The Dell D630 has a way cool feature that disables the internal network card when it is running from batteries in order to save power. Way cool until you actually want to use the network port and it stays disabled.
Things I tried:
- unplugging and plugging the cable multiple times
- rebooting
- using the Dell quickset to ‘Always activate on battery’
- turning the ‘Always activate on battery’ with various combinations of plugged and unplugged cables
- rebooting with cable plugged in
- rebooting with cable unplugged
- plugging into mains
- doing all of above combos whilst plugged in
- reinstalling drivers
- swearing
- unplugging and replugging power, network in various combinations
- cursing
- swearing
- power cycling the network switch
- attempting to enable the device from the device manager
All this time, the little lights on the network port and blinking in time to the pings from my linux box. What the hell is going on? Oh yeah and I should mention that at some point the device disappeared from the device manager. Then it came back after a reboot with ‘Device is disabled (code 22)’ and an enable button – which I pressed. A few times. Then I swore at it. Then I tried it again. Then I tried it with the cable unplugged, replugged, etc…
Then I just went into device manage and deleted the device. Rebooted and as it was rebooting: “64 bytes from 192.168.1.20: icmp_seq=7859 ttl 128 time=0.371 ms”. Yes, Jesus thankyou at last! Don’t ask me to explain – I suppose it managed to find the driver and reinstall it as it was booting.
No thanks to you Dell, Broadcom and anyone else responsible for this debacle. I’m sure it was the sales guy’s fault. It always is.
UPDATE: The plot thickens, it might not be the laptop’s fault at all. It might be something to do with my switch or the linux box’s network card. If I ever get the time, I will Wireshark it and get to the bottom of this madness!
UPDATE: It is definitely the Dell as evidenced by the number of people commenting here. It seems uninstalling quickset helps.
[tags]broadcom, dell, network[/tags]
You aren’t the only one seeing that problem… A business I do tech support for just bought a pile of Dell’s and removing the laptops from the docking stations causes the NIC to be disabled.
Which is fine if you are an admin, but part of the business IT policy is that no one runs as an admin. Regualr users can’t re-enable the device.
What is curious is that the docking station seem to use the same NIC as the onboard socket.
I have the same problem.
Workaround: Go to the Device Manager and remove the Broadcom NIC (If you find it) – then reboot.
Man, too funny cause I ran into the same problem tonight trying to verify ports at work. The damn thing would not enable for nothing, and besides using some rather unusual “technical terms” I was about to throw this POS on the wall. Hate to say it but never had this problem with my IBM. I will try the uninstall method suggested by Chris.
thanks for your comments. I have found that deleting the interface and then rebooting seems to do the trick – it just auto installs a new interface on reboot. I’m wondering if it’s to do with the auto sensing of the crossover that plays up if the switch also auto senses?
Same issue here.
I tracked it down to QuickSet. It appears to be bug-ridden.
well that would make sense too
Thanks for this, just had the same, client in hotel swearing as to why it wasn’t connecting – uninstalled Quickset – no joy – then deleted the NIC - it reinstalled itself and sucsess ! Quick set has always been and pain to deal with but not come across having to delete a NIC to get it to work before.
Thank you. I’ve been living with this problem on a Dell D620 for 1 year. Very annoying. The system/NIC was enabled while it was plugged into a port replicator, but the moment I disconnected it, wireless was my only connection to the outside world. I tried many combinations of AC/power and network cable and reboot/release from the replicator to no avail. Once the computer was out of the replicator, the NIC could not connect to the outside world even though the Network lights would energize and flash on the back as if there were some activity. I tried the “delete the device from the device manager option” and rebooted, the next time I opened the device manager the device was back (the system must have found it and re-installed at boot). While in the device manager I selected the Broadcom NIC properties -> power management->
Do not allow laptop to disable option (I did this before, but that didn’t prevent the disable from occurring). I can now remove the laptop from the replicator plug in the LAN and continue to talk to the world. Thanks!!
I am so happy I found this! I manage a group of Dells and all of the sudden everyone without admin rights has been having their cards disable and then they cannot get online. Uninstalling that stupid quickset application did enough to resolve the problem. I re-enabled the LAN connection, logged in as a non-admin and tested it out. All good. Ive wasted a good 7 hours on this mess today. I did not have to delete the NIC from Device Manager. Stupid software.
I was so glad to see this post as I am having the identical problem on my D630. But for some stupid reason, I still can’t fix it. I went to device manager and selected Broadcom NetExtreme from Network Adapters and did ->properties-> power management ->do not allow computer to turn off this devise to save power. I rebooted, no luck. I uninstalled Broadcom NetExtreme from device manager, rebooted, it reappeared in device manager, but still no nternet connection. I don’t see quickset under device manager at all, so I assume it may have been already uninstalled from my laptop, either that or I’m not looking in the right place. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Finally! I had problems with my D620 from the time I started using it (i.e. with a dock). It works at work and wireless works at home, but on travel it will be nice to actually be able to use broadband at the hotel.
This blog post has totally saved my behind.
Thanks!!
You’re my hero ;-)
I lived with this problem for about a year and a half (Latitude D830). I have been through all the same initial steps as you (including the swearing). The NIC worked fine when docked, but was permanently deactivated when undocked. I even called Dell (pro customer support). They wouldn’t listen to my arguments about this being a software problem, so they put in a brand new mother board.
I din’t try your removing and rebooting combo until now, so this article was a life saver. Thanks.
This blog post was great. I did notice if you plug in a Power supply and then plug in the network jack after the computer realizes it is charging it works. But I always unplug everything to go to use it at another conference room. Why bring a Power cord when all I need is to plug into the Jack.
This has been driving me batty for years. Thanks for the post.
Dell provide a utility to enable and disable this power saving feature of your LAN port. Assuming it’s been installed (normally by default) go to Start > Run, then type “NicConfigSvc.cpl” You should then see an option to always leave the LAN port activated.
Thanks too all, faced the same problem, not its fixed, removed the adapter in the device manager, scaned for new hardware, done.
Thanks for this, this was my issue as well. fortunately I only went through about half of the steps you listed prior to googling
I knew something was confused when the LAC device disappeared from the device manager. Restarted Network connections service and it reappeared, but it appeared to be disabled (Red X through the device icon), however, the Rclick option to Enable the device was not present – only disable. As with everyone else the Enable Device button failed to enable the NIC.
delete device and restart. thanks…
Thank you! I’ve been struggling through this for over a year! I just thought it had to do with driver conflicts with the port replicator. I get buy with the wireless on the laptop, but when I need to be connected with the 10baseT cable it never works! Today I went somewhere which only had a wire connection and I was determine to get it to work. I tired a usb ethernet dongle, but I had device conflicts. I updated my bios from A08 to A10 (I have a delel d620) and still no luck until I found a link from another site to this blog. Thank you so much!
I’m now able to still have the quickset program disable the network card when on batteries and still get the network card to turn on by pluging in the AC and removing it. Before this did not work for me! I just could not turn on the nic.
Everything is great now. Thanks again!
THANK YOU
! Just uninstall in device manager and reboot it
Thank you everyone, you made my day! :-)... All the best!
Un “freakin” believeable…I’ve had this same problem for years…ever since I got that damn dock station. But, now I am in Taiwan and using my wired Internet like nobody’s business…thanks to these comments….I feel like I’m on top of the world. Here it is again…click on Start..control panel..system..hardware…device manager…network adapters…uninstall Broadcom…re-boot computer and wallah!! surf, baby, surf
Thanks a lot for all of my friends here. this issue was a headache for me for some time.
HAHAHA! I am happy that I didn’t spend over an hour on this. We had a major power outage and I been freaking out all day! This worked just perfectly. 1 down, and a crap load more to go!