Question : Problem: NIC diagnosis

Connecting to the internet with a cable modem,besides swapping one NIC for another, what ways can you tell whether a NIC is functioning properly? I mean, is there always a green light to indicate a working NIC? Are they all green for all cards  or sometimes orange? Can they have both lights? What if the light or lights are flashing? If the NIC is pulling a valid IP address (72.67. ect) what are some things to check? How can you tell if a CAT 5 cable is bad? What doea the command ipconfig /all really tell you? I ask because I work for a cable company in the high speed help desk and I never can get an answer (poor training)

Answer : Problem: NIC diagnosis

Command Ipconfig will tell you if you got an ip from the dhcp server.
Ipconfig /? will give you more options for the command to get more detailed info on your connection such as dns, gateway

If your dealing with a 10/100 nic, orange means your on the faster 100 connection.
Blinking green means traffic.  Depending on your network it may blink a few times as it communicates with the dhcp server to get an ip.  If its blinking rapidly, you may be on a polled network, and or you have a network problem such as a bad cable.

If you think your on a polled network, you can type netstat to view open connections
netstat /? will give you more command options.

One light in normal status will be solid wether its green or orange telling you the card is on.
The other light will blink when there is traffic.