How do I troubleshoot a possible faulty NIC?

I installed a belkin wireless modem/router on my sister's computer.

It connect to the internet fine, issues ip adresses to my own wireless laptop, my brother-in-law's, nephews etc and when I connect my laptop via an ethernet cable that works fine too.

The built in NIC in the workstation has the problem, it will not accept an ip address from the router set as dhcp server. It knows when I plug in the cable and searches then fails after a while, this also happens if I try ipconfog /renew.

I have also set the ip address maually to the correct subnet, but that still fails to see the router.

The computer has the full Norton suite installed and I am not allowed to remove it as much as I would like to so don't know if this would stop the NIC woprking corectly. An external usb wireless card is being used fine at the moment but they would like that to be used for an older computer elsewhere in the house.

Does anyone know of any other testing I can do on the card for faults?

They live miles from the nearest pc shop so nipping out to buy another card is not an option until I have tested this one

Ta

 

Norton software shouldn't get in the way of getting an IP address from DHCP. The fact that setting an IP address manually doesn't correct the problem confirms this to me.

Also the fact that you can connect via a different network interface suggests that the underlying TCP/IP systems, and OS APIs connecting to them are working fine.

It does look like hardware.

I'd have a look at connection status (double click on the connection in "Network Connections ") or right click and select "Status ". Often you can spot a problem because all the traffic is one way. Either lots of received packets and none sent or lots of sent and no received.

Before looking to change the NIC, I'd check cables and router port. Try a different network cable. It's more likely to be a faulty cable than a faulty NIC, and a cable is a lot easier to replace than an on-board NIC. I'd also try changing the port the PC is connected to on the router. It could be a faulty port (unlikely - but again you should check this out before replacing the NIC as it is an easy check to make)

For more subtle problems the best solution is to install a packet shiffer (e.g. Wireshark) and use it to track error packets on the network. Lots of error packets from a single source is a classic sign of a faulty NIC. However, in your case, it appears that you are getting no connection so not even error packets. Therefore, I doubt that packet sniffing will tell you much.