Win 10 Update Breaks Ethernet

Welcome to Windows 10.

I'm not saying Win 10 is bad, I'm using it now, but it has caused many issues for network chips, including Intel's. If Intel has problems with their network chip drivers, then there were some big underlying changes in networking with Win 10.

There are advanced features of the Intel chips that have been turned off due to Windows 10 in the latest Intel network drivers. I broke one of those features I was using (teaming) when I installed the latest Intel network driver. I decided to do a fresh Win 10 installation for another reason on that PC, and I used an "old" Intel network driver instead. The teaming feature works fine with the older driver.

You are using the latest Realtek driver that according to Realtek is Win 10 compatible with your board's RTL8111E networking chip. Don't forget that all the drivers for the main hardware components used in any mother board are supplied by the hardware manufacture, not the mother board manufacture.

Rolling back to the previous build of Win 10 was a rather significant change just to fix the networking driver. I would have uninstalled the Realtek driver, restarted the PC, and let Win 10 install its own network driver. Another driver might be installed in an upcoming Windows 10 update.

I have various ASRock boards, some with Realtek RTL8111 series network chips, which have worked fine with the native Win 10 network driver for Realtek chips.

If the newest build/version of Win 10, which I will be receiving soon, is breaking networking for some reason, then MSoft will be hearing about it, and (hopefully) the chip manufactures will be rushing out fixes.

What is the point or purpose of your post? To bring this to ASRock's attention? Are you looking for a fix for this situation?

What did you do besides rolling back the Win 10 update to fix your problem? Were you using the XFast LAN software before the Win 10 update?

Thanks for the replies.  I also have a system using sn ASRock H77M-ITX board that system updated with no problems.  I'll try the driver listed at the RealTek link provided by wardog.  I ordered a PCIe adapter an will try to do the update again after I install it. 

wardog, I watched the video on the ASRock site and concluded it wasn't for me.  I'm not a gamer and I don't see how it would benefit me.  Thanks for the confirming my thoughts on the matter.

Well guess what? I updated Win 10 on my ASRock Z170 board PC to 10586, with dual Intel network chips, and both of them did not work after the update!

Both are now working again, but I had to do a couple things to make that happen.

From the Windows Network and Sharing Center option, I ran its troubleshooter. I can't recall all the details, but afterwards one of the two Intel network chips began working again, the I219V.

Curiously, both network chips in Device Manager were flagged as "Device is working Ok", while the Network icon on the Desktop Taskbar was marked with a yellow '!'.

Running the troubleshooter on the Intel I211AT chip failed to fix it. I tried installing the latest Intel 20.4 networking driver, but that changed nothing. The Rollback driver option was greyed out on the I211's Properties, so I tried Uninstalling its driver. After doing that the I211AT chip was no longer shown in Device Manager. I then restarted the PC.

After the restart, the I211 was working again. An Intel driver was installed automatically, a different version than the one used by the I219V. I'm not sure if that driver was part of the 20.4 driver package I installed, or installed by Windows.

Regardless, the two network chips are working again, both with all the options you would get from the Intel drivers.

So some manual intervention fixed the 10586 Win 10 update that breaks network connections, at least on some networking chips.

I never said there were problems with Intel networking chips or cards of any kind.

All I said was the Intel networking drivers were having problems with the 10586 Win 10 update.

I ran the troubleshoot SW and it reported that there were missing protocols and it couldn't fix the problem.  I uninstalled the device in the Device Manager, rebooted and it it now working.