In an earlier post, I talked about a basic hardware error that can end your attempt at networking: not plugging your network cable properly.

There is a related problem to this and it involves your network card or adapter. In short: make sure your computer’s operating system recognizes that your adapter is there.

The simplest way to do this for Windows operating systems is to open up Device Manager. Each of the Windows OS’s do this slightly differently and I won’t go into that here. Click the link above to find out more.

Once you have opened DM, make sure that your adapter is working without problems.

Here are a couple of the problems that DM can spot:

1. Adapter is not physically plugged in to the motherboard:
   The odds of this happening are slight — unless you just installed the adapter.

   The symptom will be that DM doesn’t even show your adapter on the list of installed hardware devices. If this is the case, you’ll have to shut down your computer, open up the case and try again to seat the card in its slot.

2. Adapter is conflicting with another installed hardware device:
   Again, the odds of this happening are slight — unless you just installed the card.

   The symptom that you have a problem is that DM will show the adapter with a yellow exclamation point (device not working right) or red ‘X’ (device disabled). You’ll also see an error code which you can look up here. You’ll also find what you need to do to resolve the conflict.

You can find out more about Managing Hardware Devices by going to the Microsoft web site.