Getting Kicked out of Adapters tab in Network Properties

[NooBChicken]

I'm having a problem where a user tried to install a network card but something went wrong during the install and they ended up cold-booting the machine.

Now when we try to go back into Network Properties we can see the other tabs ie)protocol/bindings/etc. but when we try to go into the Adapters tab, it kicks us back out to the desktop. The error that came up mentions the NCPA.CPL file.

If I make a copy of the NCPA.CPL file from a working NT workstation and copy it over, will this fix that problem?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[thatrenowned]

I would recommend moving NCPA.CPL to a temporary location or renaming it (e.g. NCPA.CPL_OLD) and then install the latest service pack.

A .CPL file is a Control Panel applet. If you copied one from another computer, I don't think it would have any adverse effects, but you might as well be on the safe side and use a service pack instead.

 

[NooBChicken]

Thanks Thatrenowned,

I followed your advice of renaming and tried to reinstall service pack 6a (our latest one) but it had no effect. Everytime we open up network properties and try and go into the adapters tab it still kicks us back out to the desktop.

Short of reinstalling I don't have any other solutions. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

 

[thatrenowned]

Whats the exact error message?

Do you know what adapters are currently installed?

I'll check my NT workstation in the morning to see if I can come up with anything.

 

[NooBChicken]

There is no error message, the network properties window just closes automatically and we get the desktop.

There wasn't any adapters installed prior to the NIC. Any ideas as to what type of registry corruption it maybe? - that's my hunch.

Thanks.

 

[thatrenowned]

You could try running a reg cleaner, for example RegVac.

What type of adapter was the user trying to install? Does it come with a setup program or does it have to be done manually?

I could be wrong, but I'm sure you can uninstall the networking components. Try going to Add \ Remove and select Windows Components. See if networking is an option, and if it is, try removing, rebooting and then add it again.