Network cards (onboard + external) not working

[relus]

Hi all

Im having a frustrating problem with my gf's desktop after it was shipped to my place. She told me it was working fine in her dorm a few days before. It is not able to connect to the internet. A few problems and things I have already done.
She is using win xp.

1) modem and cable work fine as my notebook can connect to the internet fine
2) When I first started up her desktop I noticed that the onboard lan controller was disabled with a red X in device manager. I proceeded to enable it. Unfortunately this didnt fix the problem so i uninstalled the onboard lan, rebooted and installed it again. Ive also checked the BIOS and saw that the network lan controller has already been enabled there. Ive also downloaded the mainboards drivers from the msi website. Again no change
3) There is no light/led on the ethernet port at the back of the computer and there is always a network unplugged icon with a red x at the bottom right corner.
3) I gave up after this and we proceeded to buy an external pci network card. I then disabled the onboard lan in the BIOS. Unfortunately after installing the new network card, I noticed that the same problem still persists. XP recognizes the network card and installs the drivers but there are still no lights/led and the network unplugged icon still remains.

So in summary both the onboard lan controller and the pci network card are recognized by xp but there are no lights/led, the network unplugged icon still remains and i cannot connect to the internet.

Any further help is appreciated. Thanks!

[relus]

I also forgot to mention that when I check inconfig all, the media state is: disconnected (for both the internal and external card)

[johnwill]

Please supply the following info, exact make and models of the equipment please.

Name of your ISP (Internet Service Provider).
Make and exact model of the broadband modem.
Make and exact model and hardware version of the router (if a separate unit).
Model numbers can usually be obtained from the label on the device.
Connection type, wired or wireless.
If wireless, encryption used, (none, WEP, WPA, or WPA2)
Version and patch level of Windows on all affected machines, i.e. XP (Home or Pro), SP1-SP2-SP3, Vista (Home, Business, Ultimate), etc.
The Internet Browser in use, IE, Firefox, Opera, etc.




Please give an exact description of your problem symptoms, including the exact text of any error messages.

• If you're using a wireless connection, have you tried a direct connection with a cable to see if that changes the symptoms?
• For wireless issues, have you disabled all encryption on the router to see if you can connect that way?
• Have you connected directly to the broadband modem to see if this is a router or modem/ISP issue?
• If there are other computers on the same network, are they experiencing the same issue, or do they function normally?

On any affected computer, I'd also like to see this:

Hold the Windows key and press R, then type CMD (COMMAND for W98/WME) to open a command prompt:

Type the following commands on separate lines, following each one with the Enter key:

PING 206.190.60.37

PING yahoo.com

NBTSTAT -n

IPCONFIG /ALL

Right click in the command window and choose Select All, then hit Enter.
Paste the results in a message here.

If you are on a machine with no network connection, use a floppy, USB disk, or a CD-RW disk to transfer a text file with the information to allow pasting it here.