I'm trying to help out a friend return a laptop to usefulness. It's an ~5 year old DELL Inspiron 2200, running Windows XP that I have upgraded through SP 3, that she hadn't used since her husband passed away ~ 4 years ago. We've reactivated her Internet connection provided by the local cable company and when I plug my computer into the connection it works fine. When I plug her laptop in we get a "cannot acquire IP address error message". So I took it home and tried it on my system. It connects to my wireless router, but does not connect to my hardwire line providing the same error message. I ran ipconfig and it showed addresses for the wireless connection but no gateway address for the hardwire. This hardwire works when I test desktops down there so I'm sure the wire is OK. In fact when I unplug it from the laptop, it gives me a LAN unplugged message. As an aside it's telling me this is LAN 4 although when I look at networks under control panel I only see one LAN listed, why the 4? I suspect there's something wrong with the software setup but not sure what. BTW I uninstalled the drivers for the NIC and restarted. It recognized the NIC and reinstalled the drivers.
Thanks,

Bob Warasila

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