I had a problem with the boot drive in my HTPC going, so Ive had to swap it out and re-install Windows.

I dropped a Maxtor 300Gb drive in, formatted it and installed WinXP SP2. Im going about installing the usual first run of drivers (motherboard, video, sound, LAN, etc) when I get an error message half way through the installation of the onboard network adapter; something to the effect of "can not continue as this system does not have the hardware".

Odd I thought, so I look under System > Hardware, to notice no network adapter.... not even under yet to be installed hardware.

For the life of me I cant figure out why its not appearing... Ive checked the BIOS, and the onboard LAN is enabled, but it just wont appear under Windows (when it has in the past).

The board is an Intel DG965OT - an MATX media centre motherboard.


Does anyone have any ideas? Could the NIC have blown? If it had Id have thought it would chuck up some sort of error/fault?