Clicking noise when trying to connect to Internet

[unshyki]

Hi Everyone,

I am trying to help a friend over the phone, she lives in another town. While other two computers in the network connect just fine, her computer stopped connecting to the Internet:

When she types a URL in IE and hits enter, the PC makes a "clicking" noise thru the speakers (similar to what happens if you click many times on the mouse button when the PC is frozen) and then she gets the error message "a LAN cable is unplugged"; the same happens when she opens the "local area connection status" momentarily says connected and then blinks off.

She looked in the back of the PC and says that the NIC led's sometimes blink and sometimes turn off, I had the feeling that the problem is the NIC but we checked the device manager and it does not show any error and she doesn't know how to open the PC to make sure the NIC is well seated.

Is there any way to check the network card thru WindowsXP to see if there is any physical problem? Could there be a software problem instead, like IE corruption or virus or somethings?

Any ideas will be great appreciated, thanks.

[Statica]

umm .. IE has a clicking noise when any URL is loaded. First verify that the clicking noise "goes away" when the speakers are turned off.
You get multiple clicks because the computer is trying to connect to a network, failing which, it loads up an error page.
If you want to remove the browsing clicks, open the control panel > Sound and audio devices... scroll down to Windows Explorer > select Start Navigation and change the sound to None.

Regarding why the computer isn't connecting to the network, please furnish more details of the network. Is there a LAN? How is the LAN setup? How is the PC acquiring an IP etc.

[Digitalic]

If the lights on the NIC are blinking on and off and the PC gets the "network cable disconnected" message it may be as simple as the cable having a loose connection at the NIC.

Have her wiggle the cable at the NIC and see if that affects the connection (lights blinking off and on) Could be the cable connector itself or the port on the NIC. Maybe just presing it in firmly will help.

[glc]

It could also be a problem with the connection at the switch or a flaky switch port. Rebooting the switch/router/hub (whatever it's connected to) may clear it up. It could be a damaged patch cable or a problem in the CAT5 wiring.

[unshyki]

Thank you Guys for the help,

"It could also be a problem with the connection at the switch or a flaky switch port"... She has a DSL modem with a Linksys router, we tried rebooting the router a couple of times with no result, now I'm thinking we didn't try switching that computer to another router port (the other two computers are working OK).

"If the lights on the NIC are blinking on and off"... What I meant is that the NIC led's sometimes blink but some other times thay stay completely off for a little while (we reboot the Pc several times but this doesn't change).

We'll try switching the CAT5 patch or the router port and see what happens, once again thank you

[AlwaysUp]

Try another Cat5cable as GLC says. Sometimes.....it is the simplest things we neglect to eliminate when troubleshooting.