"Connection has limited or no connectivity" Long story short: My friend has had dialup and just got cable. He has never before used his network card. Nothing's ever been plugged into it. I read more often than not that this is a SP2 glitch. He has SP2, as it came with his system, but whether or not that is the cause is unknown since he's never used the nic. BTW, no routers, hubs, or switches are involved. The cable modem is just hard-lined right to the desktop. I did so much to try to mitigate this problem: - The official M$ patch - Made sure nic was alive and healthy - Assigned a fake IP and pinged it and made sure it was responsive - Did some winsock repair/resetting - TCP/IP reinstallation - Ran some netsh and ipconfig commands like a maniac - Installed a fresh network driver - Ran "WinSock XP Fix" - Tested different settings from autonegotiation to 10Mbps/Full Duplex, and so on.... No dice. I still can't get internet. He's willing to buy a new network card for cheap, so I wouldn't mind doing that, but I am the type that likes to find a solution before finally going with a contigency. And every site I look up says this problem is SP2 related, usually with wireless routers, and is often a complete mystery. So far I can't find any significant suggestions beyond what I've tried.

Could it be the cat5 cable from modem to PC? In this situation it needs to be a patch cable and not crossover. Does the cable modem also come with alternative USB? If it does and you switch cables from cat5 ethernet to usb you have to do a power reset of the modem. You may also need to instal modem drivers. What make/model cable modem? I used to have a signature but it disappeared and I just couldn't be bothered writing another so please feel free to ingore this.

I'm with Richard. Try the USB connection instead. If there's no available USB port, check the TCP/IP settings for the connection and make sure DHCP is selected. Life is more painless for those who are brainless.

He doesn't have a USB cord for his modem (btw, isn't using a USB cable instead of cat5 technically slower?). As for the modem itself, it's an RCA DCM325 that I gave him. He didn't wanna rent one. Anyway, I tested it on my computer before I took it to him....and it worked perfectly fine on my computer. I took my modem off, put this one on (with its own line), waited 10 seconds and it was fine.

Sounds as if the ISP isn't recognizing the Ethernet address of the card. Did you register the card with them so that an IP can be obtained? On a personal note: when I had cable modem, I was willing to pay the extra $3.00 a month to rent the modem from my Cable Company/ISP. That way, if anything went South, the Cable company would troubleshoot it...Saving me the aggrevation. Life is more painless for those who are brainless.

I didn't think you had to register specific cards with an ISP. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but for everyday Joes that isn't an obvious thing to do. I only say that because most cable net providers try to make it as no-brainer as possible. They install the line and give you a barebones modem, you plug it into your nic, and boom...you have internet. I took my tower to his house and used the modem and tested it on my computer. Guess what? It worked fine. BTW, this specific modem is on his provider's list of accepted modems. I actually got it from them. I looked up about a gazillion websites about this - and no one seems to really have a pinpoint solution.