Realtek Ethernet Controller Driver Not Found

Hello everyone,
So I know that this a question that has been asked a bunch of times but nothing is working and I am getting pretty frustrated. I've been using a Netgear Nighthawk router with my PC but I am still getting too much interference/lag when gaming so I decided to switch to a wired connection. I ran a cat6 ethernet cable from my PC to my router. Went to switch from WIFI to ethernet on my PC and it wouldn't detect the ethernet cable. Usually, under network adapters there would be a red X on the Realtek Ethernet Controller (when not plugged in) but the only thing listed is my netgear wireless adapter. My buddy told me to update the driver for the Realtek Network Controller...only problem was that it is not listed under Network Adapters in device manager whatsover. Its gone. When I try to update the Realtek driver through the MSI website (my mobo brand) I get the well-known error message 'The Realtek Network Controller was not found. If Deep Sleep Mode enabled Please Plug the Cable'. By the way, there is no 'ethernet controller' under 'other devices', otherwise I would have used that fix already. Someone said to go into msconfig and change to 'normal startup' , only problem is that after restarting it goes right back to selective startup (and I've tried to troubleshoot that also). When I get home I am going to try and re-sit the RAM to reset the MOBO. If that doesn't work maybe I will reset BIOS (even though I am not sure how to do that).
Any help will be much appreciated! Thanks!

Install Realtek Ethernet Controller Driver

So I recently built my own computer. Everything was working fine, I was able to make everything work fine. Then yesterday morning I started up my computer and it was not connected to the internet. My ethernet was plugged in and everything was as it should be. I went in to device manager and noticed that my realtek network controller was not in the device list under network adapters. I then tried to reinstall my LAN drivers from ASUS (my motherboard) which is how I got it to work in the first place. However, this time when it 'finishes' installing an error pops up and says 'The realtek Network Controller was not found. If deep sleep mode is enabled Please plug the cable.'
I went on to many forums and here is what I've tried so far...
Unplugged Power supply and flipped the power supply switch to off and let it sit for 10 mins (also I let it sit for a few hours and same result)
Took out the RAM and did the above step again
Went into Bios and made sure that my LAN settings were all enabled (also tried resetting all my settings to the default)
Also flashing the bios (I'm not sure if I did this correctly, let me know what I should do, or how I can tell if I did this correctly)
I'm at a loss..... I have been working on this now for several hours and still have not come up with a solution. If anyone can help me with this, it would be much appreciated.
Thanks.

Synaptics Pointing Device Driver

Hi, I have also tried this except the Realtek Network Controller does not show up (that is what prompted me to reinstall the LAN drivers). But when I try to do that, it says that deep sleep mode is preventing me from finishing the installation. I installed some windows updates including an OPTIONAL update to my Realtek Ethernet Controller. After the updates a driver cannot be found for my Ethernet Controller. Even worse, I can no longer connect to the Internet. I tried an image restore to a previous version of Windows. I tried re-installing a new version of Windows.