Toshiba s157 phantom NIC??

Howdy all.

I have a interesting situations here. Im working on a Toshiba laptop (s157), the user complains that the unit wont connect to her cable modem.

Well first thing I do is bring it to my connection and plug it in (this will be important later). I get no activity on my network, so i check device manager and it shows no NIC installed. Ok, scan for new devices a couple of times to no avail. Reboot into safe mode, to remove all NIC drivers and there are none installed.

I check the BIOS to see if it might be disabled, it isn't.

Well no i decide to check Toshiba's web site for some sort of bulliten. I dont find anything related to networking. So i Dl the spec shhet (hoping to find the NICs models no.) and guess what? According to Toshiba there is no NIC installed, only a v.92 modem. I call tech support they give me the same story.

Well on the back of the laptop there is a modem jack, that has the engraved modem symbol above it. and imeadatly next to it there is a Cat 5 connector (or is it recepticle), that also has a yellow and green led flanking either side of the jack (neither of which light up).

Well I am kinda perplexed. There is a spot to plug in Cat5, that has the send and receive LEDs next to it, but nothing shows up in windows and Toshiba thinks I'm on crack. any ideas on how I might get this rouge hardware to work? Any idea how it could be in the machine and not work?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

Could it just be a secondary RJ-45 plug to be used in conjunction with a PCMCIA NIC?

The manual here states that there is no network port on the 1000-S157 model. :confused:

The A15-S157 model, on the other hand, has LAN drivers here for its integrated NIC, but that model's modem port is on the right side, not the back and definitely not next to a LAN jack.

Maybe it's just a wrong back panel installed on this particular laptop...

What does Belarc or Sandra say about it?

Sandra says that nothing is there.

Just talked to the owner and she said that it was working with her DSL before she moved. Im thinking that she hooked the modem up via USB.

Since she doesnt want to spend any money and most cable modems support Cat5 and USB, I'm going to have her connect it via USB.


Thanks for all the help.