T30 W2k, Ethernet and wireless unusable.

[elzopi]

I hope someone had a similar experience or can shed some light.



Scenario:

After a McAfee 5.x uninstall (preparing my machine for a 9.x install), my Network connections still showed "McAfee internet firewall" bound to both my wireless and Ethernet cards.

I called McAfee and they guided me to a manual uninstall of the firewall instances. Apparently everything looked golden to that point until I rebooted my machine and I was surprised to see that both the Ethernet and wireless cards (internal) were in a "found new hardware" situation.

I did have the drivers but my OS would never recognize the cards, they would both be marked with errors. I have tried so many times to uninstall them, but I get the message that "cannot uninstall, the device might be needed to boot" I even tried to render the Ethernet card as Disabled at BIOS to no avail.

I have a 2nd hard disk with WXP and both cards are recognized and work perfectly.

I would like to avoid reloading W2k on the 1st disk as I really like the way it runs with my applications, my T30 really zooms.

Your comments and help are more than welcome.

Cheers,

Felix

[GomJabbar]

I have tried so many times to uninstall them, but I get the message that "cannot uninstall, the device might be needed to boot" I even tried to render the Ethernet card as Disabled at BIOS to no avail.

I see that you said; you tried to uninstall the network cards.

Have you tried Windows System Restore to go back to a time when your system was working OK?

Next step, log on as Administrator. Go to Start > Control Panel > System > Hardware > Device Manager. Open up Network Adapters, right click on each adapter and uninstall it. Then install the drivers again, making sure you point to the location where the drivers are located.

If you can't uninstall the adapers using the method above, try booting up in Safe Mode, and uninstalling them there.

Last resort (but this isn't for everybody). Set a system restore point, and if possible, create a backup of your hard disk. Run regedt32 and remove all references to McAfee first. If still no luck, remove all references to your adapter cards. Note: sometimes you have to change the permissions under security in regedt32, in order to remove a key.

EDIT: I forgot to add, after you make changes, you may need to reboot, for the changes to take effect.