I am running an HP laptop with Windows 8.1. For the past year or so I have used the wired connection without issue. The other day I get home from work to realize I have no network connection. As I went through troubleshooting steps I realized that there is no wired Ethernet adapter in the device manager. All I see is this:

When I enable "show hidden devices" This is what I see: 

There just doesn't seem to be a wired adapter even recognized by Windows, flat out vanished! The wireless works just fine, however I would really rather use the wired connection for a lot of what I do. Some of the troubleshooting steps I have done so far:

1. run sfc /scannow

2. Run chkdsk

3. Ran a Windows Repair

4. Restored Windows using the restore partition

5. Found the manufacturer ethernet drivers and installed them hoping the adapter would show up

I'm starting to think that it may be a hardware issue, I've just never seen an integrated network adapter fail without other motherboard issues.Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated.

P.S. There are no "unknown devices" in device manager

• Edited by Acreed02 Thursday, March 26, 2015 2:21 PM

Hello Robert,

I found some time to run those queries, when I run the wimic.exe nic list brief it comes up with 2 802.3 adapter, neither of which are a standard wired NIC. One is the wifi adapter, the other is a wifi virtual adapter. The other things seen are ISATAP adapter, tunneling psuedo-interface etc.

At this point do you think it would be safe to assume that the wired NIC is just dead?

• Edited by Acreed02 12 hours 31 minutes ago

Actually, I have spent more time on this than I ever should have. I just spent a few bucks on a USB to Ethernet adapter and it works. Gonna call this complete. Thank you Robert for your help.

• Marked as answer by Acreed02 10 hours 58 minutes ago