Windows 7 - Unidentified Network

Kaiju

Kaiju

Kaiju

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I recently put some electronic contact cleaner (compressed air) over my motherboard to get rid of dust and since then i've had multiple issues with the motherboard. For some reason, it all came out like a liquid but I thought this was normal as it evaporates quickly. Anyway, I let the computer cool down first with an open window and left it an hour or two before starting up again.

Firstly the onboard NIC can't connect the internet, then the the mouse has started stuttering intermittently. The mouse eventually corrected itself on its own after multiple restarts following multiple changes to the network adapter, but my X-Fi soundcard has since then taken on the stuttering intermittently with crackles in music playback. Sigh.

I've tried a whole host of things with the network, so my guess is I messed up my motherboard. Any incite into the matter would be appreciated. It's definitely hardware based and it's not the modem or router as they work fine with other computers.
 
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sounds like you had the can at an angle causng the compresed air to condensate amd produce a small amount of liquid.

Please tell me you did not try to clean your computer with it turned on?

If you have you most likely fried the south bridge or network controller!
 
Yeah, that seems to be the case. The network controller and southbridge seem to be the culprit.

I did turn it off for a good hour beforehand and took out all the plugs. I then left it for a further hour or two after cleaning. I thought I was safe, but the directions on the can were ripped off with the price tag and seal. Being my first time using compressed air, I paid a costly mistake.
 
If the PC was off and unplugged then it'd be very rare for that liquid to cause any damage, I use to do it a fair bit years ago and never had a problem. Have you tried blasting it again to ensure there's no dust trapped and blasted under the motherboard to make sure there's no dust hiding there now that you've removed it from the top? All it'd take is one short and frankly it could even be a case of remounting the motherboard fixes it. A localised short could only affect one portion of the motherboard, so check any screws near the ports.
 
I'll take everything apart when I get the time and see if re-assembling it will do anything.

Thanks for the aid guys, appreciate it.
 
regarding the internet problem, what do you see in Network and Sharing center, do you have more than one networks listed under 'view your active networks'?
 
Kaiju said:
electronic contact cleaner (compressed air)
Click to expand...

Electronic contact cleaner is not the same thing as compressed air, it has a solvent in it such as isopropyl alcohol which is used to remove dirt from electrical contacts. The liquid you saw was not the compressed air condensing, it was the solvent. I'm not sure if it could have caused your problems but it's not the thing to clean your computer with.
 
davethe11 said:
regarding the internet problem, what do you see in Network and Sharing center, do you have more than one networks listed under 'view your active networks'?
Click to expand...
No, just the Local Area Connection.

RobH, thanks for the heads up on that one.
 
Oh dear, took everything apart, gave it another quick clean and the thing is struggling to get past boot. Took out all the USB connections bar the keyboard, took out the PCI X-Fi soundcard and i've been able to enter Windows again. Stability tests show the mobo is on it's way out. In the BIOS screen, my OS drive was labelled with an unknown character set, lololol.

So yeah, time to get me a new P45 mobo. Any ideas on a cheap one?

Also, if I clone my drive using Windows system restore to an external drive, then replace the mobo, can I restore the old image? I'm guessing no, so is there a viable alternative to simply reformatting which would suck?
 
RobH said:
Just don't format the drive at all, it will work fine if you replace the motherboard.
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Is this due to Windows 7's flexibility with different hardware or has this been de facto for some time?

I didn't know motherboards were hot swappable now.
 
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Kaiju said:
Is this due to Windows 7's flexibility with different hardware or has this been de facto for some time?

I didn't know motherboards were hot swappable now.
Click to expand...

The hardware side of things is fine, I'm not sure if you're on about that or the Windows activation side of things. Swapping the motherboard will more than likely require you to activate Windows again, if it fails you just call the number given and explain what happened, they should let you activate it again as you swapped out a faulty part.
 
Well i'll be! Fired the PC up for no reason to just sit and stare and the net is working again.

All I did was turn off the IPv6 protocol for the LAN. I did that before though, but low and behold after another quick clean and the Internet works. Crazy.

Obviously i'm not happy my PC has absolutely no reliability at all, but it's a foothold to start from.

Now it's time to see if the soundcard has any intermittent playback problems.

EDIT: HAHA! BSOD followed by not being able to get past boot. Lovely.
 
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I took everything apart again and it boots again. I reinstalled some mandatory hardware drivers and now no more playback issues with sound or internet problems. :)

I get a BSOD each time after a while though, so i'm running stock and will do some stability and stress tests. Should be okay in a day or two of testing. Happy days!
 
I've isolated the problem to the soundcard and the network controller.

If I disable the LAN, sound is fine. If I enable the LAN then sound is intermittent.
 
Definitely the soundcard now, took it out and the Internet works.

Phil2008 said:
Buy a wet n dry wickes hoover/blower for about £30, Id be lost without mine for blowing out my pc
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I'll look into it, can't be dealing with this compressed air stuff if their is even the slightest chance of thermal freezing.
 
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Nope, now i'm getting all kinds of BSOD's, lol.

I've had:

BAD POOL HEADER
PGE FAULT IN NON PAGE AREA
DRIVE IRQ NOT LESS OR EQUAL TOO
cdd.dll crashed (unbootable, system restore fixed)
ntdll.dll crashed (unbootable, system restore fixed)
0x0 error (unbootable, system restore fixed)

Haha! I've just replaced the RAM, see what happens and i've taken out all my hardware.
 
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