"Network Cable Unplugged" on Ethernet Connection

Shorted or maybe the soldering on one or more pins has failed which can unfortunately happen if you are frequently plugging and unplugging it.

Nightspear said:

Have you uninstalled the Realtek software that you installed from the Programs and Features list, reboot, go to PC's manufacturers site and install the latest NIC drivers, reboot. You might get lucky and have everything spring to life.

Yep sure did. In fact, I went as far as the delete the OS partition and completely reinstall a complete clean copy of Win10. After even that didn't work, I tried one last time using the driver version from HP to no avail.

Ouch!! I hope everything was backed up. If a fresh install of Windows didn't work it is either bad hardware or is physically turned off. Although I am sure you have tried this too. I had one pc be physically turned off via the HP monitoring software, I forget what it was called, maybe network monitor. Once I installed the latest version of the software, I was able to turn it back on.

Nightspear said:

Ouch!! I hope everything was backed up. If a fresh install of Windows didn't work it is either bad hardware or is physically turned off. Although I am sure you have tried this too. I had one pc be physically turned off via the HP monitoring software, I forget what it was called, maybe network monitor. Once I installed the latest version of the software, I was able to turn it back on.

Thanks for that! Yesterday I had a moment where I remembered that HP laptops have an advanced BIOS that's essentially hidden. I'm desperately trying to get into that so I can see if somehow something went wonky and the ethernet was shut off there (since there are no settings in the dumbed down BIOS they make you use). Alas I've googled my head off and still haven't made it into the "advanced" settings.