Computer got wet, now media disconnected

[sonoferu]

Heavy rains got into our cellar where my office is, with my desktop on the floor. It got maybe an inch or two of water before my wife saw the water and got it off the floor. After stopping the flooding and mopping up, I opened it up and by then everything looked dried out so I took a deep breath and started up. After several POST fails, it did come up, saying Resuming Windows [it was in Sleep at the time] and the mouse took a long long time to become active, things worked really slowly, etc. I restarted and it was much better. I figure the heat of the board was finally drying out little bits here and there

Now the only thing failiing is the network. In ipconfig I get Media Disconnected. The Network is built in, I guess. There is no actual card in a slot, just a little metal box on the board that the cable goes into. It's a custom machine by a local computer shop, Windows 7 Pro. I have a laptop that works using the same ethernet cable, so things are good up to the point of the cable plugging into my box. In Device Manager it says the RealTek adapter is working properly.

When I plug in the cable, I dont see the usual little blining light on the side of the cable port

I shut iot down, and left it overnight with a hair drying set up a couple feet away to do a constant warm flow into the insides, then tried again just now, still the same Media Disconnected

So if the internet coming in from the cable is ok, and the device is "working", what does Media Disconnected mean?

here is the ipconfig /all

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : felecha
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 10-BF-48-7B-8B-CC
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Tunnel adapter Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Tunnel adapter isatap.{A67305D9-A0BD-49CC-A1D5-74B9734302EC}:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft ISATAP Adapter #2
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

 

[sonoferu]

BTW - to be clear, this is not wireless, its a cable coming in - "Local Area Connection" - Network Cable unplugged"

And to note also, the cable port is a good 4 inches above where the water ever got to

And one more thought - my wife just grabbed it and put it up on the desk, on its side, without pulling any cables out of the back. Maybe the network port thingie got yanked? No way to know, she was the only one here at the moment and was pretty frantic

 

[sdifox]

Do you have another piece of ethernet cable?

 

[Mushkins]

Sounds like the motherboard is shot, even if the port itself did not get wet the circuitry and chips on the board that control it may have. Not to mention the humidity and water potentially warping the board or breaking/weakening the solder, or a surge from when it got wet causing damage.

Honestly, if I had a PC that got *that* wet, I would not trust it even if it seemed to work. If you have flood insurance I would include the PC in the claim with anything else that was damaged and replace it.

 

[sonoferu]

sigh ....

in the haste of the moment, my wife unplugged things to set up fans to dry things out

well, the network hub was one of them ....

sigh

but thank goodness

apparently the mobo only got barely wet on the bottom edge. So far now with the NIC back, everything really does look ok. here's hoping

we called our insurance and our policy does not cover water damage unless its from inside - broken pipes for instance. It is not flood insurance per se

so all set, thanks for checking in

 

[azazel1024]

I hope to god that is a switch and not a hub.

 

[sonoferu]

it's actually a router, sorry. Not a network guy, I put it all together with help long ago, still dont really know what a switch is vs a hub vs a router.

but ... working is good

thx

 

[jumpncrash]

Sounds like the motherboard is shot, even if the port itself did not get wet the circuitry and chips on the board that control it may have. Not to mention the humidity and water potentially warping the board or breaking/weakening the solder, or a surge from when it got wet causing damage.

Honestly, if I had a PC that got *that* wet, I would not trust it even if it seemed to work. If you have flood insurance I would include the PC in the claim with anything else that was damaged and replace it.

You would be quite surprised how wet a motherboard can get before actually being damaged, even with power going to it.