one last thing to check.
When you plug in the cable do you get any of the activities LED to light up on your PCs ethernet port?
If not, it may be fried.
There are no LED's on the port connection. It just seems odd that my laptop, the maintenance laptop and another engineer's laptop all have the same problem and it has occured after the installation of RS Logix 5000 and RSlinx. Each have been connected to different processors. Each have been connected to LAN before the installations.
literally no LED's on port of laptop.
Installation of new version of RSLinx and port works now.
Tomorrow I will test connection to processor and again to LAN.
I once had a strange issue with my etherNet through rslinx that started with not properly grounding an analog module. Symptoms were similar, resolved by fixing the ground, though I never got to test it on anything else besides the plc.