I am having problems with my NIC. I recently purchased an HP Pavilian PC - it came with a Realtek PCIe GBE NIC. It will randomly drop my network connection (I get a ! in my taskbar network status). If I right-click and "Troubleshoot," the problem is corrected (it is diagnosed as "The default gateway cannot be found.") Sometimes it stays fixed for hours, sometimes minutes, sometimes the problem re-appears almost immediately - the problem is very intermittent. I have 2 other PCs and 6 other non-PC devices on my network that access the Internet through the same router as this PC, and none of them are having this problem. This problem appeared when I rebuilt my PC. I am using Windows 7 64-bit Professional. When the problem presented itself (almost immediately) I was using the drivers off of HP's site (v7.45.516.2011), and so I went to the Realtek website to see if there were newer drivers. There were, and I installed v7.53.216.2012. This did not correct my problem. I am using Norton Internet Security, and I have tried disabling it's firewall and using the built-in Windows Firewall. That did not correct the problem. I tried turning off the Windows Firewall as well and going without to see if that would fix it -- it did not. I've made the mistake of paying $99 to AnswerDesk.com and they have not been able to resolve my problem. I also contacted HP, and of course, after 3 minutes on the phone, their default answer is that I need to do a System Restore (returning my PC to factory condition). I also tried emailing Realtek, and they sent me like a 3-line response saying that it's probably my network (it doesn't even look like they read my problem description). Doing some searches, I've seen others with this problem with varying hardware and OSs (appears to have been a problem for some people in Vista, too), but I have not seen many, if any solutions, and certainly none that are applicable to me. Help! :-(

Hi After windows 8 crash and automatic recovery I got the same error. its the solution worked for me, from conn0rmc7 posted in (thanks connormc7) http://www.forumswindows8.com/network-sharing/default-gateway-not-available-after-every-boot-4929.htm Step 1 : go to your control panel Step 2 : go to "Network and Internet" Step 3 : click on "Network and Sharing Center" Step 4 : on the left side bar click on "Change adapter settings" Step 5 : Select your Wi-Fi connection (only select, do not double click) Step 6 : on the top click on the tab, "Change settings of this connection" ( for me i had to click on the double arrow icon [>>] to show it ) Step 7 : go to the "Sharing" tab Step 8 : check the box "Allow other network users to connect through this computer's Internet connection" (I got sharing tab by double clicking network driver, SHARING tab). It worked. I am posting through that.