My computer tricked me. I couldn’t connect to the net since i got back to Japan and i had no idea why. Actually i had plenty of ideas, but none that i could fix. For example my university messaged us of a scheduled downtime last friday, maybe they forgot to switch the router back on? No, my neighbours can still use their net. Is it a cable problem? None that i could see. I even called the provider’s support for some info on what could i do, but they only suggested testing with other computers and stuff. (This was today, since i couldn’t get through to any human on the support line for three days, #hellyeah super-r net.)

Since i couldn’t borrow another pc right away (everyone either used theirs or they weren’t home), i just took the modem and checked if it could get in touch with the tv in the common room (which had a lan port for unknown purposes), and it could. This started to raise my suspicions, but i couldn’t really think of any problem my computer could have except for the failure of the network chip on the motherboard.

Then i got a laptop (thanks Ia), plugged in, and it was working. Now what? I checked some forums, but except for some advice to report the problem (without a network connection), update the drivers (same) and getting a third party lan card, i couldn’t find anything. (The motherboard in question is a Gigabyte GA-880GMA-UD2H micro-atx.)

Just so that you understand the circumstances, the problem was that the modem got the line (network connection led on), but couldn’t connect to the pc (F/H led flashing, lan led off). When i tried the tv, it didn’t have the network connection, yet connected to the tv instantly.

So i tried turning the laptop in question off, to see if the modem maintains the network connection while the pc is off. It did. I cut power to the laptop, that was when the connection went down. So i tried cutting power to my pc (luckily there’s a switch on the power supply), and bam, it worked. No idea what was the problem, but now i know how to fix it.