Onboard Ethernet broke down

[PlanHex]

The weirdest thing happened to me about a week ago. My Onboard Ethernet port somehow broke down, and I have no idea why.

At first I thought I'd gotten some kind of virus that killed the drivers, but Windows did not even recognize the damn thing's existence.
Before it broke it'd usually light up on the back of the case whenever the motherboard was powered, but now there was nothing. So I tried resetting (flashing?) my BIOS, but no dice. I checked the motherboard to see if anything looked burned out or broken, but found nothing. Then again, I'm not all that big with hardware, not quite sure what to look for. And I didn't check the back of the board, but I'm not sure if anything really can break back there.

I haven't changed any hardware recently or anything like that.
The only thing I can come up with is that some weeks ago I started shutting off the power completely (as in turn off the entire extension chord my computer stuff is powered by) every night before I went to bed to save a bit on power.

Any ideas as to what caused this? Freak power surge that only affected the network card for some reason? Or something more sinister? *GASP*

I'm hoping to sell this comp to my flatmate when I get a new one and I can't really do that if this is something that might happen to the rest of it in the near future.

P.S.: DAMN a lot of stuff sure came up this week in the news. maybe my comp deliberately died to spare me the gameplay videos' setup for inevitable disappointment

*edit* Crap, forgot. Motherboard is ASUS P5GD1 PRO

 

[Pope Viper]

If you've got goofy power, a surge protector/power regulator would be highly recommended.

Sometimes things just burn out and die, without any apparent reason.

If you need a temp solution, just pick up a cheap NIC, until you can dump it.

 

[SuAside]

if it's power related, expect a cascading effect. most sensitive stuff dies first. it's very rare for everything to simply die at once.

anyhow, it could be a shitload of things. doesn't necessarily means everything will die. i'm afraid there's only one way to find out.

 

[PlanHex]

Thanks guys, I guess I'll just ride it out and see if holds up until I've got enough money for a new one.
And maybe sell it to my flatmate before it dies, so I can pin it all on him