Via Rhine installation problem

[time]

I have a Via KM400A motherboard (Asus, curse their black heart). It temporarily replaced an nForce 2 board and all was fine (actually, it was a huge PITA, but I won't go into that).

I removed it and used it to replace an nForce 1 board. Everything works except the Via Rhine network chip, which Windows plug 'n pray repeatedly chokes on, no matter what I try. I've had 'error code 31' and now 'error code 1', which in essence means the driver's stuffed. Although the CD driver worked previously, I downloaded a newer version from Asus, but to no avail. I've tried deleting the inf files, uninstalling until I'm blue in the face, etc.

Both PCs are running Win2k SP3. The drivers were fully uninstalled from both before installing the new board. Does anyone have a diagnostic hint?

I hate plug 'n pray. :evil:

 

[Will Rickards]

sysprep it and let it detect the hardware over again?
Maybe I misunderstand what sysprep does as I've never used it but I thought that is essentially what it does.

 

[mubs]

Mess with the Registry, deleting any and all keys referencing the network chip? :-?

 

[Tannin]

Plug in a $10 Realtek. Time is money.

 

[Mercutio]

Tannin's got the right idea.

Sysprep would in fact wipe out all the currently installed hardware and force a re-detection, but I have no idea whether or not that would actually fix things in this case. It kind of sounds like there's an honest to goodness software conflict there.

I've found that I have problems installing Via Rhine GBoC with things that have vanilla Realtek 8139s. Don't know why, but I've seen it twice now.

 

[time]

Okay, I bunged in a network card (Davicom, I have heaps of them lying around).

It does exactly the same thing!

So, obviously Windows is broken. I ran System File Checker - no change. Then I did a Windows repair - no change. I've been in and out of Safe mode, removed "Rhine" keys from the registry, disabled the onboard network chip, etc.

Aaaaaaagh!

This is ridiculous. The PC was working perfectly well beforehand, I just changed the motherboard because some caps were bulging. Windows is a giant POS.

So, Sysprep, you say? Or has anyone encountered something similar? I'm starting to face up to total reinstallation.

 

[time]

Solved it. Windows PnP enumerator problem, although MS tries to imply it's the fault of the network card vendors:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306983