Hey guys, I have a dell inspiron 9300. It came with windows xp home, which is no good from what I've learned in school. So i aquired a copy of xp pro through my school and installed it. Now that it's installed, my internet is not working. I tried running through every possibly combination of the wizard, but still nothing. How can i get it to connect to my lan?!?!?!? PLEASE HELP!, Brds

1st thing to check is your nic driver. right click MY COMPUTER, slect PROPERTIES. click the HARDWARE tab. click the DEVICE MANAGER radio button. If you see no exclamation points or question marks, you are ok with drivers. 1. Do you see exclamation points anywhere? If so, is one labelled PC NIC, or NETWORK ADAPTER, or something similar. Probably so. Just double click the exclamation point object, and a button labelled REINSTALL DRIVER [or something similar] will be there. You need to have the NIC driver available. It will be on the Resource CD that came with the DELL, or you can download it from support.dell.com. reply here if this is so. If you need instructions to install the driver, i will reply.

jbuskirk, Thanks for the response... i have no exclaimation points, but five question marks. The question marks are all in the "Other devices." When I expand the "Other devices" tree to see which points have question marks, they are Ethernet Controller, Multimedia audio controller, Network controller, PCI Modem, and Video Controller (VGA Compatible). The only one i think i know how to fix is the video controller since i have a copy of the video driver on my other computer at home (i'm at work now). Any thoughts on the other things? Thanks again, brds

Since you have a DELL, meaning that is a factory built computer, there is no reason you can't just go to the Dell website and lookup your computer model, and download the drivers. Use another computer to burn these to a CD, or at least write down the model so you can install them. I don't know what you meant that "which is no good from what I've learned in school" There are millions of people who use XP home every day of the week--and it works just fine.

then ETHERNET CONTROLLER is the object you need to double click and update the driver. IF you have trouble finding the driver let me know, i will provide a link. I will need the 7 digit alph numeric 'service code' from the pc to do this. NOT the windows install registration code, the DELL SERVICE TAG. It will be on a bar code label with an asterisk on each side. on windows xp home, 'no good' is a pretty broad description, but you can't connect to a domain with Windows XP home so some institutions will declare it 'unusable'. Just semantics really.

By "no good" i mean that xp home doesn't fully utilize the resources of the computer. Pro has better memory usage/management and other little things like that. No BIG difference, but ya know... every little bit helps i guess. So you think that if i can find the drivers for these question marks that my internet should work? The device manager said that my 1394 card was good and installed correctly... ??? ARG! ~Brds

Hello everyone, "By "no good" i mean that xp home doesn't fully utilize the resources of the computer. Pro has better memory usage/management" You need to change schools. So you think that if i can find the drivers for these question marks that my internet should work? Until you install the drivers for your ethernet adapter you will not be able to connnect to the internet. If you are still having problems after installing them, let us know. Best Regards and Wishes, Mesich, Webmaster of mesich.com Currently stored on a temporary webhost.