Powerline networking stopped working

I had powerline networking working in the morning but its not now. I notice that the ethernet port does not blink at all. Is the wire spoilt? Should the port blink even when there is no internet or LAN connectivity?

UPDATE

I tried plugging directly into another ethernet cable which connects into the router, ... still no light ... isit really spoilt? is there somewhere I can see in Windows to verify? is a usb - ethernet adapter worth? perhaps its better to use wireless thenb wait sometime to build a new pc? my current 1 is abt ... maybe 3 - 4 yrs i think

3 Answers

When there is no LAN conectivity or internet, no, it does not need to be blinking. If light is steady and on, it should be fine. You might just have some misconfiguration in the router (IP, dns, dhcp, etc)

Did you have a power shortage? two things might have happened if so: Simply the router lost some configuration setting (so, check it all well) , and sometimes I have noticed that powerline devices loose for some hours conectivit,y with one of these events, or when some machine of large power usage got triggered, or if it had a problem. Like as if stuff happening in the internal cables might affect the quality of the signal.

Also check if you changed somehow the cables installation, or where are you plugin now the devices, if you plugged it in a different room, etc (always do directly in the wall, and remember distance can be a factor). If there was some change in that. Have you checked with a laptop using same powerline device?

This happens to me sometimes, it could be something going on in your powerline.

What I usually do is hit the reset button on all adapters to reset them back to factory and then they all usually pick each other up and you have a running powerline again.

My interpretation of the question is that you used powerline ethernet adapters, but you lost network connection. You plugged ethernet directly from PC to router, and still had no connection, so it seems that the problem is your onboard ethernet card and not the powerline adapters. You are wondering

1. whether there is somewhere in Windows that will tell you if the ethernet card is broken
2. whether a usb ethernet card will work to get you back on the network
3. whether you need a new PC

To answer 1, you can go to the Device Manager and see what devices are attached to your PC and whether they are working ok. If the network card driver is broken, you'll likely see an error mark. If the card itself is broken it probably won't appear as a device at all.

Why would it break? Maybe a power surge came through the powerline and the powerline adapter didn't shield your computer. Maybe the card is still ok, but you moved your PC and the card was bumped and came loose from the motherboard and needs reseating. Maybe the powersupply is breaking and is starting to slowly kill things off.

To answer question 2, yes, a USB ethernet adapter should work. You may be able to plug it back into the powerline adapter if that looks to still work (maybe look into ethernet surge protection though).

Do you need a new PC? Probably in the next year, as 3-4 years is a typical life span (though some might get to 7+ if you don't need to run new software and you look after it). If more things break, you'll know it's time. I'd recommend making sure all your valuable files are backed up on dropbox/google drive/one drive/external disk in case the issue really is power surge related as another surge could kill your disks.