WiFi works, wired connection doesn’t

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Came back from lunch to no wired connectivity. Usual reboot of dock did not fix. Other computer wired connection works. Swapped router ports. No fix. Decided to restart computer. Bad news, restart hung – completely unresponsive, even ctrl-alt-delete didn’t work. Did a hard shutdown with power button, restarted a couple times in hopes they would fix the problem. No joy. When I look in device manager I don’t see anything labeled Ethernet Connection! Tried Windows Troubleshooter, no luck. Dell Support Assist wants me to download and manually install Net 6.0 – pass for now. Computer is Dell XPS 13 9370 purchased 5/1/19. W10 22H2 updated 02/24. Looking for hope/help from some of you wizards?!

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Sounds like more that just the wired connection is going on…

If you have a recent System Restore point, restore it.

 

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Try to start in Safe mode (press F8 a lot at boot). If that works, then boot normally.

If it’s still not well it may be hardware or software. A restore from backup or re-install over the top is the easiest fix for weird software problems.

cheers, Paul

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You indicated you’re using a docking station.

Suggest you remove the laptop from the dock and connect the network cable directly to the laptop.

If that works, you need a new dock.

If it doesn’t, then boot into the BIOS (press F2 while the Dell logo is displayed) and check the network adapters to ensure they’re recognized and available.

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Try

Search

Network connections

View Network connections

Make sure view is on “Details”

Is your Ethernet connection there?  if yes make sure its status is “enabled”. If no may be hardware issue (such as  modem, router etc.)

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Well after much checking as much as I could manage, rebooting into safe mode, etc. all efforts failed. Then I remembered I had an old StarTech Gigabit Ethernet Adapter somewhere. BTW, the Dell XPS 13 is a particular PIA when it comes to using USB A/B devices. It has only 3 USB C ports. Everything, including power to charge battery, basically comes through the Thunderbolt Port. Anyway, I plugged the StarTech adapter into a USB B/C adapter cable Dell thoughtfully supplied and restarted to find I now have hard wired ethernet connectivity. Thank goodness! Incremental backups were taking 4X as long using WiFi 5.

So lounger n()ads gets a gold star for reminding me to troubleshoot the dock.

I think I may have an older dock of the same type. Haven’t been able to find it yet. They are not cheap, so I’ll keep looking.

Thanks all for you ideas about diagnosing my problem.

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