Windows 7 missing network adapters

Download the drivers for them from your PC manufacturers website, for your specific model as well.

open device manager and click on View select option hidden devices, now check if you get the network adapter.

Also make sure you have installed all drivers from motherboard CD/DVD.

I cant install drivers for devices that are shown as not present

devices do not show up under hidden devices but they are listed under non-present devices

Go to device manage, and right click on computer icon, and select "Scan for hardware changes"  It should detect..

Once its detected, Reinstall the drivers..

If its not detecting, Try to add legacy network adapter and browse for driver selection and click on have disk and browse for correct driver file  and install and test.

devices not found with a scan for hardware changes, adding legacy hardware makes no difference

Did this just happen?

IF so go back to a know good restore point.

Maybe something got installed that effected this configuration.

What anti virus program you run? IS it up to date? Does it scan regularly?

This happened after a virus infection, laptop had mcafee installed but still got infected.
McAfee has been removed from the laptop.
The laptop hard drive was removed and an external virus scan carried out on another PC to remove the initial virus.
The laptop now works fine apart from the network adapters.
I have ran Malwarebytes and Nod32 anti-virus and laptop is clean.
There are no restore points on the laptop so I cannot go back to an earlier date, it looks like the customer turned off the restore for some reason.
I can wipe and re-install the laptop which will probably restore functionality but I would prefer to find the issue for future reference.

Viper550

YEs that would have been my next suggestion is to do a fresh install.

Only thing if infected the hard drive may be bad to use.

Think about getting another one to replace just a thought.

Can you send the screenshot of the network adapter from device manager, so that we can get more info about that.

Also if you are seeing the network adapter and any yellow mark for any unknown hardware i request you to just right click on that and uninstall it. then scan for hardware and see if its network card ( you will have to provide NIC driver)

There are no devices with exclamation marks, the adapters are not present according to windows.

can you boot into the safe mode with networking and check once?

I have tried safe mode, safe mode with networking and clean boot, still no network adapters

did not provided screenshot of the devmgmt.msc

I would do a fresh install at this point.

Fresh installation is the last option.

Screen shot attached
Devmgr.png

try this one once :
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-hardware/windows-7-is-not-detecting-a-network-adapterdriver/b8efb393-e85a-4e2a-a46e-cfff79b0f58f

Thanks for the suggestion but I have already installed latest drivers for chipset and updated the bios, it is a windows issue not a driver issue.

okay can you run below exe and check if that is detecting the NIC card or not?

remove .zip to start with working.

also let us know if service pack 1 is installed.
freepcaudit.exe.zip

Also did you installed any new application or hotfix (or windows update runs)

open msinfo32 and locate component-->network-->adapter and check here if NIC is located or not along with this check for the protocol.

freecpaudit will not run "invalid access to memory location" error
msinfo32 does not show network adapters

freecpaudit is working on my machine (win7 32bit). Can you try to run check disk once on the machine.


if Win7SP1 is installed then i suggest uninstall it once and then try to get fix this NIC issue.

I hope this uninstallation will do this NIC working.

can you post latest update on this so that we can do more for you.

I've requested that this question be closed as follows:

Accepted answer: 0 points for viper550's comment #a39574695

for the following reason:

Not an ideal solution but I couldn't waste any more time on it

i suggested just that in :  nobus   Posted on 2013-10-02 at 09:22:49ID: 39539032

Nobus, you suggested backing up my data and doing a fresh install.
I did not do this.
I put a windows 7 disc in the drive and ran an upgrade setup, not the same thing.
Running an upgrade setup preserves all data and programs and is a lot quicker solution.

fairly spoken, there are differences  - if we are in a law court
but since we are on EE - it does not matter that much

lets see what a mod says about it