Hey guys. You're my last hope here. I've tried everything I can think of. Here's the story. A friend's PC got infected with several viruses and malware (he wasn't using any firewall or AV). The above specs are for his computer, not mine. The viruses mangled his system files and backed me into a corner where I had to wipe the HDD and reinstall XP with the included eMachines restore disks. All went well. Except that the restore disks did NOT include the network adapter and driver. (It's an onboard ethernet deal.) I restored the system twice more, hoping it would magically straighten out, but no luck. I talked to their tech support for hours. Was advised to download their network driver. Did, but no luck. Was then advised to download and reinstall the chipset driver. Did, no luck. I went to VIA's site (it has a VIA Rhine II Fast Ethernet adpater) and finally got Network to show up in the Device Manager, but now there's an exclamation next to the Rhine II device. I have tried manually reinstalling the right driver many times. No luck. Under properties for the device, it says "The device cannot start (Code 10)". I really don't want to let my friend down here, but I can't make sense of this, and until I can get this thing to connect to the Internet, I can't download SP2 or any of the needed updates. Thanks for taking the time to read this sob story, lol. Just hoping someone has come across this issue before. My searches on Google have been fruitless thus far.

Lenoir... I would get a PCI NIC card, plug it in...chances are the on board NIC is shot...

The T2542 uses a realtek network card not VIA and also uses the Intel 845G Chipset Driver not VIA you need to uninstall them and reinstall the proper ones click the link and choose downloads for the proper drivers http://www.emachines.com/support/pr... In The Matters Of Style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, Stand Like A Rock "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."

Before I went searching for the Network driver, I went into system information, and under Network, in components, it said it was VIA Rhine II, plus, when I go to Install Hardware and tried to get the driver installed manually, the VIA one was the one listed. So, it sees it's there, but doesn't let it run or something. And yeah, I had the right chipset driver for the 845G. I didn't mean to make it sound like I'd used the VIA for that, too. :) Thanks for the suggestions.... The onboard network worked prior to my taking the machine from him to de-virus it. (It was the only thing that still DID work, lol.) Viruses can't actually damage hardware, can they? Because there's nothing I could have done to hurt anything on the MB. I'll look into the RealTek thing right now....

Hey, I figured it out! Guess what.... when the system restore disks were used, the onboard LAN was set to Disabled inside the BIOS by default! What kind of dirty trick is that to play on people? That error code 10 (The Device Cannot Start) got me thinking as to why it couldn't start and that led me to check the BIOS peripheral settings. If you see anyone encounter a similar issue with eMachines, be sure to point them this way, OK? Thanks again for trying to help me. :)