There has been a lot of buzz around upgrading to 10.10 and afterward having network related problems. This post will focus on our USB3-HUB3ME, USB3-E1000, USB2-E1000 and USB2-E100 Ethernet adapters, but we encourage you to apply the concept of this content to troubleshoot other brands or similar network related issues.
First, it is a good idea to check if you have any possibility of connecting to your network via WiFi. If you cannot connect to any network via WiFi or Ethernet adapter, you might want to carefully consider this Apple forum thread which addresses this problem. If this is not your problem and is isolated to your Ethernet adapter only, the latter set of instructions is for you.
For OSX/BSD/Unix/Linux it is best practice to remove non core kernel modules/drivers/extensions before performing a major upgrade and to reinstall the latest revision after this has been accomplished. We will take a similar approach to fix this issue.
Again, these instructions are for a seemingly non working Ethernet adapter (USB3-HUB3ME, USB3-E1000, USB2-E1000, USB2-E100) after upgrading from 10.9 “Mavericks” to 10.10 “Yosemite”.
- Disconnect Ethernet adapter
- Take a look at “System Information” > “Software” > “Extensions” and look for an instance labeled “AX88179_798A” (for the USB3-E1000 and USB3-HUB3ME), “AX88178” (for the USB2-E1000) or “AX88772” (for the USB2-E100) and select it for you to be able to look at the “Location” path (as an example, the AX88179_79A instance has the following path: /Library/Extensions/AX88179_178A.kext)
- Open your Terminal and run the following command:
sudo kextunload /pathof/thextension/NAME_OF_THE_KEXT_FILE.kext(note this is the path shown in system information in step 2). Now you have unloaded this extension.
- Reboot
- Download the newest driver from here and install
- Connect the Ethernet adapter and test