We have a server with a Fiber NIC that will not talk on the network since we tried to update a driver. The orginial 1GB Fiber card was a Transition networks card that had problems with the driver install. At some point the driver would no longer completely install and the server would not restart without hitting the power button. We booted into safe mode and removed the driver and rebooted. We then logged on to the server with the local admin account and attempted to reinstall the driver. The driver install failed again. We attempted this several different ways but could never get the card to properly connect on the network and the driver could only be removed by booting into safe mode. At this point we decided to purchase a new fiber NIC. We purchased an Allied Telesis NIC and tried tried the same install. We ran into the same issue. The card is initially detected as a broadcom card, and the driver installation appears to complete, but the NIC does not talk on the network. Once the Allied Telesis driver is installed, we cannot talk on the network, and we cannot disable the NIC. Once we attempt to disable the NIC, the device manager hangs. We have tried leaving it over night, and it never comes back. If we attempt to reboot the server, it will hang at the shutdown screen and you have to hit the power button to get back into it. Booting into safe mode allows us to delete the driver and start over. Is there any way to completely reset the network configuration of a Windows 2008 R2 server? We don't want to lose the database or application loaded on the server, but we need the NIC back on the network. Deleting the NIC is appearantly not enough to reset all aspects of the network configuration. Is there more we can try before we give up and reload the server?

Another sign that something basic is wrong with the network configuration is that NETSH is having trouble when I try to do a trace. If perform the following command it never returns the command prompt back. A reboot causes the server to hang at the shutting down screen: NETSH trace start capture=yes report=yes persistent=yes When I do this on a normal system I get an almost instant response. I tried removing the drivers completely in safe mode, and then attempted to detect the card again. That seemed to complete successfuly. Then I disabled the NIC and updated the driver. The driver appeared to update successfully and I renenabled the NIC and rebooted into safe mode with networking. After configing the IP address I still cannot ping anything off the box (loopback and local address ping fine). I still see nothing in the arp cache from remote systems. I tried to run the NETSH command noted above and the command prompt never returned. I rebooted the server and it hung on shutdown and had to be powered off to reboot the server. I don't see anything in the event logs to explain any of this.

Reloaded the server. Never seen anything like this and didn't see where anyone else had either. Server was fine after a reload, so the issue was operating systems related, but I can't say where the problem was.