Is there a fix for a dead ethernet port besides a new logic board?

If the USB to Ethernet also went dead then it might not be the built in port. It might be some corruption in the OS and specifically the drivers for the Ethernet port.

Try installing OS X on an external drive and run the system from that. If the built in port works then it is the internal drive that is corrupted and not loading the drivers for that hardware.

USB and Firewire information:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1151?viewlocale=en_US

USB:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4049?viewlocale=en_US

Firewire Port failure:

http://www.wiebetech.com/whitepapers/FireWirePortFailures.php

Boot the system from either the internal Recovery HD partition, Command+r when starting the system, or the Online Internet Recovery system, Command+Option/Alt+r keys and hold them down until you see a globe on the screen.

Have the Ethernet cable connected while doing that and if the Ethernet port works you know right then if it is a corrupted driver or the LB has problems.

Yup, Sorry to say but it does look that way.

The part what i dont get is why do we need a complete new logic board while perhaps it's just a bad connection point of the port connector it self. Isnt it weird that a complete board needs to go in? Why dont they have connectors with small seperate connectors so the port can be replaced much faster and quicker. This would loose a bit in speed perhaps but would cost about $800 when needs to be fixed????

You could have tried any other manufacture of USB or FireWire/Thunderbolt to Ethernet cable besides Apple's

Unless your USB connectors have also failed on the logic board.

http://eshop.macsales.com/search/Ethernet+adapters

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Eth ernet+adapters

here is what i did, The drivers for the network cards seem to have an issue with a buffer overflow apparently, changing the hardware configs in advanced brought it back alive in seconds. here is a link to the video that explains what to do

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1P6X87qArs

i also tried resetting smc and pram, reinstalling, fixing disk permissions, adding a manual address, and this is the only thing that worked 🙂

This problem baffled me. I kept getting the "ethernet cable unplugged" error after testing my cables good. Was abut to write it off as port gone bad when I found this thread.

The YouTube video reference above fixed my problem. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1P6X87qArs)

Basically go to SETTINGS/NETWORK. Then highlight your ETHERNET port and click the ADVANCED button. From there click the HARDWARE tab.

Set

CONFIGURE to MANUALLY

SPEED to whatever your ethernet speed is, in my case 1000baseT

DUPLEX - FULL DUPLEX, FLOW CONTROL

Leave MTU at Standard

Hit OK.

Then don't forget to hit APPLY. I didn't do this the first couple of times assuming hitting OK applied these settings. You gotta hit APPLY.

In about two seconds, my Ethernet connected again.

I went back and reset it to AUTOMATIC just to test and after doing so got the cable unplugged error again. So I am leaving it on manual and it's working.