NIC light on but not working

[limpelephant]

The status lights on the NIC itself stays lit at amber all the time. The only time it turns off is if the laptop is shut down and is NOT plugged into the powersupply. so if its on battery and the machine is off, the light is off. If the machine is off and plugged into the AC Power the light on the NIC stays on.
When plugging in an ethernet cable (that i know works because i use it on multiple machines that reach my desk all day long) the amber light stays on and there is not a green flicker ever of an actual connection between the laptop and the switch.


In windows it loads the drivers for the NIC says it's functioning.
When booting via LAN it says media test failure, check cable. ( there's a live cable plugged in)
BIOS sees the card fine.

I have two laptops that this is currently happening to.

The laptops plug into different Switches aswell.

In the past when this has happened ( 3 other times, 3 different T61's ) the laptops have been under warranty and Lenovo swaps the mainboards.

[limpelephant]

We have Z61m, Z61t, Z60t
T60 and T60p
T40, T41, T42
T400
T61, T61p
The only model that has ever had this problem are the T61's.