OKay heres the deal i have a dell inspiron 2500 that i recently purchased from a garage sale it originally had windows me on it the system specs are as follows

CPU- celeron 800mhz

HD- 10 G

Mobo- i815EM

Ram- SDram 254

Now i have wiped the hd and installed xp in its place everything went smooth and dandy however i cant connect to the internet now i'm trying to connect through a straight connection of cable modem no passwords its always turned on now normally this wouldn't be a problem but when i open the task manager and tab over to networking it is a blank grey screen with the words no Active network adapters found. In the network connections folder within the control panel there is nothing its just blank when i try the creation wizard it just tells me that my connection should already be working which of course it isnt So my question is , Is my network card broke and i should just go get a new one or is it something i'm missing and i've checked the hardware drivers everything is in order PLease help

You aren't really clear on what driver you installed.

http://support.dell.com/support/down...&catid=&impid=

the driver was already installed its called the
lucent modem in the device manager under modems its also has the standard pcmcia card modem underneath it i've uninstalled and reinstalled both but nothing has come it

Best bet to do with that laptop to bring it up to speed:

1. increase the ram from 256MB to 512MB
2. change the HDD 10GB to 40GB or 60GB 5400 or 7200rpm whatever can get
3. install Windows XP Pro or Home a fresh copy.
4. buy a new pcmcia network card wireless G like Belkin red/gray package.
5. buy a wireless router if you don't have one already.

So, did you try the 3Com driver that was supplied with that comp?

http://support.dell.com/support/down...&catid=&impid=

modem driver is for dial-up

under the Device Manager, look for Network Adapters. These are the Ethernet NICs
for Cable or Adsl connections

okay i see the problem there are no network adapters tab appearing in the device manager but heres the interesting part. On my laptop there is a built in Ethernet jack but it seems to not function as when i plug in the cord no blinking red and orange lights. And i'm guessing since no network adapters are showing up in the tabs something is wrong

i'll post some pic's of the ports and of the laptop shortly but this forum says i have to have 5 or more posts so i'll just have to post on some other topic first ha

bingo! You need the device drivers from the MFG. Try looking on the OEM CD

alrighty i will try to see if dell has the drivers for it . It may be difficult considering dell has a bad habbit of discontinuing support for anything over two years old ha ha

I'll keep you updated if i find them or not

I decided to give you guys a better view of what your dealing with this post has some pic's provided of the laptop and its port/pc card that i have

"I'll keep you updated if i find them or not" -you ARE kidding right? I pointed them out to you.

cct, yes i tried the 3 com driver but its still not working correctly the computer doesnt have the hardware even present in the device drivers there ARE no network TABs present. I went through the add hardware option in control panel and installed the com3 networking card. After that it does show up but then it says it cannot start becuase there is a problem any ideas?

The hardware won't show (at least mine doesn't) without the driver installed.

What I usually do is download the drivers to a Foldwer I make called LAN Drivers and then unpack/unzip them THERE. Then I use the Add Hardware Manager and when it sees my Network card I direct it to that folder (I don't use auto-detect).

In your case, if that is a PCICMA card bus card (hope I got that right), it should be left in and should appear as like mine, ie, an 'onboard' Ethernet card.

Yes, auto discovery requires the device to be attached and THEN the system is booted

okay i'll try and do the method that you used cct i'm going to do it on a new fresh install of xp as my other one i believe i messed up the drivers when i was playing around to try and get them to work. I'll let you know how that goes.

i do have one quick question about the drivers there are two different sets of com3 drivers one set is in communications and the other is in networking i originally tried the networking one. Was that the correct choice of driver??