He exhaled.
He grabbed the USB-to-Lightning cable, plugged one end into the iPhone, the other into a USB port on the dead PC. On the iPhone, he selected USB Only . On the dead PC, Windows made the familiar da-dunk sound—a device connected. He looked at the network icon. how to update network drivers without internet
He sat in the darkening room, the rain now a steady roar. He opened the iPhone’s Settings app and wandered through menus out of desperation. Personal Hotspot. He tapped it. Options: Wi-Fi Password, Bluetooth, USB Only. He exhaled
The internet was down. But it was worse than that. On the dead PC, Windows made the familiar
He ran the installer as administrator. A progress bar appeared. Extracting files... Installing drivers...
That’s when he saw it. Under Network Adapters , his trusty Intel Ethernet Connection (7) I219-V was adorned with a small, yellow warning triangle. The device status read: "This device cannot start. (Code 10)."
He saved it to the desktop. Then, before he did anything else, he turned off the USB tethering. He didn’t want Windows Update to auto-download something wrong in the middle of the process.