Screwed up the computer

[cianco301]

Okay. I have a Dell Dimension 2400. 4 years old. Decided to wipe the hard drive and start fresh. Unfortunately I only know enough to really screw things up. So I reinstalled Windows XP and now I can't find LAN in my network connections. I am on my husbands laptop now so I know our internet connection itself is still working. I have tried reinstalling all the disks that came with the computer. We have broadband cable internet thru Comcast.
Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

 

[DoubleHelix]

You have to install drivers for the Ethernet adapter. Go to Dell Support, and enter either the service tag number or the model number for the computer and download what you need.

 

[cianco301]

Thank you for the response. Slap me stupid but if I can't get on the internet how I am supposed to download something? Are you telling me to download off another computer and burn to a CD or something? Won't downloading to another computer screw that one up?

Thanks again!

 

[Angron]

Go to dell's customer support page like specified, use some kind of storage device (memory pen/cd/dvd etc) and download the ethernet driver, once downloaded extract the file (on the computer that has no connection) and it should fix your internet connection problem. once this is done go to windows update page and download everything they offer you, this will clear up a few driver problems.


To check what drivers are missing right click My Computer and click manage, then device manager, and devices that come up as yellow are missing, dells website should have all drivers needed.
hope this has helped