Network Cards not showing up

W2K Advanced Server on an NT4 domain. Four network cards. All working fine. All show nicely in device manager.

But none are showing up in the Network Connections window and none are showing on the task bar. In network connections, I have the "add" option but nothing else.

This does not seem to be causing any problems but is annoying. They were displaying fine at one time (within the past several months).

It is possible that a reboot would take care of the problem but this isn't a server I want to reboot unless there is a major problem. It requires about 3-4 hours of work after booting it to get everything back in working order and during that time the factory production folks have to switch to manual recording and product routing so .....

 

>bump<

Any wild guesses on this one?

 

Might they show up if you configure device manager to show hidden devices?

 

Just tried. Now seeing the various pseudo-devices (wan miniports, etc.) in device manager but still nothing in the network window.

I also tried just now adding a new device. Device manager showed it after the add was done but still nothing in the network window or showing on the task bar.

Very strange.

 

Do they show up when you open Advanced Settings window? Another strange one.

 

Nope. In the Network Connections window~advanced~advanced settings:

Advanced Settings Adapters & Bindings simply shows a place-holder for RAS connections. Nothing specific listed there which is good since there are no RAS connections for the server. But no sign of any adapter information.

Advanced Settings Provider Order shows the proper Network & Print providers.

 

Interesting and puzzling. What I'd do is add a USB NIC, which could safely be done without shutting down, and see what appears.

 

Interesting idea. Have to check with the hardware folks tomorrow (they only work days) and see if they maybe have a usb nic around somewhere to try. Otherwise have them get a couple. Thanks for the thought.

 

Update and the cure

Finally tracked this critter down. As follows - just in case it ever happens to anyone else

- System was NT4 and upgraded to 2K AS.
- While an NT4 box, DCOM had been seriously tweaked to allow an application (Rascal) to run properly.
- The 2K upgrade didn't like the settings and wouldn't work with them.
- Among other interesting effects, RPC Server Service was no longer running auto-start and 3 network-related dlls were unregistered.

The fix (which you can find by searching technet for missing network) involved changing DCOM settings, re-registering the 3 dlls, setting RPC back to start when the box was started.

Lucky thing the box was also set to ignore it's onboard SCSI/RAID but that one was still cabled to be checked first. When set like that, the fool thing won't allow setup from the startup CD since we were to the point of blowing it away and doing a fresh 2K AS install.