Thinkpads Forum

I haven't used it in some time, but I had to few days back and it is gone. I mean it is physically there, but no system detects any Eth card. Only WiFi is visible.

I tried lspci in Linux but it only shows WiFi card. No trace of the Ethernet card. I also tried Windows with same result. It's like the card is gone, or switched off on the hardware level, but I tried looking inside BIOS for some switches with no success.

Does anyone have any idea what could be wrong here?

My laptop is ThinkPad W500 (same as T500).

Deep sleep?

Did you try connecting a cable to the Ethernet port?

Yes, I did. LEDs remain off.

So the ethernet port being botched is the only explanation?

Lockheed wrote:So the ethernet port being botched is the only explanation?

That sounds about right.

Pull out the CMOS battery and leave it out for a few minutes to see whether that will do anything.

Good luck.

Turned out Ethernet was in fact disabled by an option deep down in Power/I-O settings. Strangely enough, removing CMOS battery did not reset it. I am happy to say it is now working fine.