Asus K8N nForce3 motherboard

I have been using this motherboard for almost 2 years and it has served me well without any problems until last week when I decided to use the built-in Ethernet feature.

Transferred my existing D-Link network card to my mother-in-law's computer so might as well use the on-board LAN rather than getting a new card. So, I went ahead enabling the on-board Ethernet through the BIOS, popped in the motherboard driver CD and tried installing.

Here's where the problem starts, I managed to install all the drivers including 'Ethernet' except for Nvidia Firewall and Remote Connection Manager. Booted up the PC again and looked at the 'Device Manager'( right click 'My Computer' , then goto 'Hardware' tab', then choose 'Device Manager'). A yellow exclamation mark pops up beside 'Nvidia nForce Networking Controller'. Obviously, the Asus K8N nForce3 motherboard driver CD did nothing. Now, what the hell is this 'Nvidia nForce Networking Controller'.

Solution

Fortunately, I found a way to make that on-board Ethernet work. First, make sure you enable the Ethernet feature from the BIOS. Next, install all the drivers from your motherboard driver CD( well, actually you can leave out Nvidia Firewall and Remote Connection Manager ). Reboot the computer. Goto Nvidia website and navigate to the 'download drivers' section. At the drop down menus, choose nForce>nForce 4 Series> nForce 4 AMD>Driver>Windows XP ( if you have a different OS choose the correct one). For my case, I downloaded the file 'nforce_winxp32_15.17_international.exe'.

Now, that you have the file, double click on it to install. At the install window, choose only Ethernet and you can untick the rest. After this the installer will reboot your computer. Now, check the 'Device Manager' again, you will see the yellow exclamation mark beside 'Other Devices'. Don't worry, restart your PC one more time.

Finally, a few popups will say new hardware is found and automatically installs the driver and ready to use. Well, don't ask me why it works this way, but I'm suspecting they had the correct driver on the nForce4 AMD driver pack and not the CD provided by Asus!

ps. If you can't find the driver or lost the cd driver for Asus K8N nForce3, just give let me know through the comment section. Now I sound like I'm working as a tech support for Asus :P