Laptop works wirelessly - but not wired?!

Hi,
I'm running Windows XP Home Service Pack 2 on a Toshiba laptop with built in wireless. It connects just fine to the internet with my Belkin wireless router at home. When I take it to my ex-wife's house, who does not have wireless internet, I plug in her Ethernet cable to my network port. My laptop does not connect to the internet. I've tried it again at home with my wired cable and it doesn't work here, either - it always searches for the wireless first. I disabled the wireless adapter with Device Manager but to no avail. Finally I tried it at work and the message came up, "This device has an IP conflict with another device on the system." I turned off all computers, turned off the router, turned off the modem; turned on the modem, turned on the router, turned on the laptop FIRST. I ran ipconfig /release through the command prompt. I received a notice saying something to the effect of "You cannot perform this action while the device is unavailable." It is STILL defaulting to the wireless connection. It CAN'T be this hard. I ran the Internet Connection wizard, saying to detect automatically, and Windows unhelpfully ends the wizard with "You should already be set up to connect to the LAN." Very frustrating. Is there some easy step I'm missing?? So that I can switch from wireless to wired with ease?

 

If the router has DHCP enabled, and if your "LAN" card is enabled and working properly, and if in your LAN card's IP/TCP property you have chosen "obtain IP address automatically" and "obtain DNS automatically", and if your cable is ok, then it should work. Click the "repair" on the card in case of problem.

 

Start, Run, CMD to open a command prompt:

Type the following command:

IPCONFIG /ALL

Right click in the command window and choose Select All, then hit Enter.
Paste the results in a message here.

{credit johnw}