Technology Forum

Hi I'm doing a reformat/clean install of windows xp pro sp2 on a dell inspiron 8100. Everything went well, and it seems windows as most of the hardware covered driverwise. however, i'm having trouble installing the driver for my ethernet lan card. It's not to be found in device manager in any way, not under 'network devices' and not as a device thats not installed. Can't really figure out why. Also, if i plug in the network cable, the little green light that is supposed to be on, isn't. There is no sign of life whatsoever. I tried downloading the networking driver from dell.com, but i don't know how to install it. I tried to install it manually by forcing it to use the driver i specify, but with no luck. When i point it directly to the driver, it doesn't show any network devices in the list. I checked the BIOS, but it doesn't seems like theres anywhere i can choose to enable/disable the network adapter, other than when its docked. And i already tried to enable that, again without any luck. And it worked before the reformat/reinstall. Any ideas, anyone? I'm really stuck here...