woody wrote:
> I have 3 PC's connected to DSL through a modem feeding 3 PC's. Today one of
> my PC's had a major problem with Avast being disabled and it appears a
> nasty Virus or trojan may have zapped me. I run avast and spybot and
> spyblaster along with windows defender and keep them updated.
> I decided to wipe the c drive and reinstall windows XP.
> Everything went fine except I can't connect to the Internet to update.
> Looks like my Rhine 2 ethernet adapter is missing. I see a IEE 1394 but no
> ethernet. I looked on the MSI driver disk but had no luck.
> PC is 3MHZ AMD with 3 GB memory.
> Where are the Rhine ethernet drivers?
> I am pretty sure they were installed with the MSI drivers originally.
> TIA
That would likely be "VIA Rhine". It could be the Ethernet MAC
logic block is inside the VIA Southbridge. So the driver would
come from VIA. This is their download page. And I've selected
the most likely menu items, to help you.
http://www.via.com.tw/en/support/drivers.jsp
"Microsoft Windows"
"Windows XP"
"Ethernet (Networking/LAN/WAN)"
"VT8231, VT8233, VT8235, & VT8237 Integrated (Rhine & RhineII)"
That would be one guess at a source of a driver. This is the file
you should end up with.
http://www.viaarena.com/Driver/via_rhine_ndis5_v384a.zip
Ethernet looks like this, architecturally.
Motherboard ---- MAC --- PHY --- Ethernet_Transformers --- RJ-45_connector
Sometimes the MAC and PHY are inside a separate chip, and that chip is near the
small IC-looking package containing transformers.
In the case of something like VIA Rhine, the MAC may be inside the Southbridge,
and the external chip in that case is just a PHY. The PHY would be near the
transformers and the RJ-45 connector. Sometimes the transformers are in their
own IC-like package and sometimes they're integrated into the Ethernet
connector stack.
Even if you use a program like Everest, Belarc Advisor, or the like, it
may still be hard to figure out what chip you're looking for a driver
for.
If you unzip that "v384a" ZIP file, then go to the X86 folder (for 32 bit
WinXP), then look in "FETNDIS.inf", there will be a list in there, of
the hardware the driver is intended for. Down at the end of the file,
you can see some identity strings.
VT3106S.DeviceDesc = "VIA Rhine III Management Adapter"
VT3106J.DeviceDesc = "VIA Rhine III Fast Ethernet Adapter"
VT3065.DeviceDesc = "VIA Rhine II Fast Ethernet Adapter"
VT3043.DeviceDesc = "VIA VT86C100A Rhine Fast Ethernet Adapter"
Looking in the setupapi.log file on my C: drive, from when I was using
a VIA Rhine, this is the ID information for it. The driver version
I was using, was 3.67, and a bit older than the 384a available for
download now. I've since retired the motherboard, so I'm no longer
using that chip for networking. (I replaced the motherboard with
a different model.)
PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3065
"VIA Rhine II Fast Ethernet Adapter"
C:\WINDOWS\vnDrvBas\FETNDIS.inf\3.67\WINSETUP.EXE
Actual install section: [VT3065.ndi.NT]
Hope that helps,
Paul
