D-Link Gigabit Ethernet Card Failure

One of the things I still use my PC for is to scan in and archive paper documents using PaperPort software. I was doing just that this weekend when I noticed that the PC had dropped its Internet connection. Windows XP wasn’t telling me that anything was wrong, but I refreshed the connection and then got a message telling me that the PC could not be assigned an I.P. address by the router. A glance at the router revealed that its lights were flashing spasmodically. Either my router had gone bad, the network card had gone bad, or some Trojan had taken over my computer. To start eliminating things, I shut the PC down and rebooted the router, which came back normally. I then booted up my iMac which connected to the network and the Internet as expected. So, the router was looking like it might be okay. After disconnecting the PC from its Ethernet cable, I booted the PC and ran Norton Antivirus to check it but got negative results. I also ran Ad Aware and Spybot and, though they did find a few things, hooking the computer back into the network after the items had been removed did nothing to change the computer’s behavior. So, I bought a Hawking Gigabit Ethernet PCI card from Microcenter and installed that in my machine. The PC hooked up to the network normally; so, indeed, the D-Link card did appear to be the problem.

I don’t typically buy D-Link stuff because I haven’t had much luck with it. Too much of it seems to fail within short period of time, and that makes me nervous because my current router and a Gigabit Ethernet switch attached to it are both from D-Link. Hopefully, the card failure will turn out to be an isolated incident and not a precursor of what is to come. If not, then I have bought my last piece of D-Link gear.