My computer has been having occasional one- or two-second freezes while gaming, so I tried to stop a service in Task Manager that I thought might be causing the lag. It produced an error, and after restarting the computer, Ethernet no longer connects to the router or the internet. I've already tried several ipconfig commands and restarted the router, but nothing has helped. I'm not sure which service I stopped or how to restore it. What should I check to get the network connection working again?
3 Answers
Check the Ethernet adapter and its status before making bigger changes. Confirm the adapter is enabled, then run the Windows network troubleshooter and inspect the output of ipconfig. The IP address, default gateway, and whether the address starts with 169.254 can help show whether the computer is communicating with the router. Restart the computer, router, and modem in order as well.
Reinstalling the network-card driver usually isn’t the first thing to try, especially when the problem began immediately after stopping an unknown service. Find out which service was changed and restore it, then reboot normally. In the future, check what a service does and note its original startup setting before stopping it, because disabling system services can cause unrelated features—including networking—to fail.
If you stopped or disabled a Windows service, the first step is to identify it and set it back to its previous state. Open Services, check services that are set to Disabled or stopped, and restart the one you changed if you remember its name. Since the service is unknown, avoid changing or removing network drivers until you know they’re actually involved.
I already tried uninstalling and restarting, but Ethernet still can’t see the router. I’m thinking the service I stopped is the real cause, although I don’t know which services control networking.