Ethernet cable cannot connect to internet

I have dell dimension 3100 and just re-installed windos XP professionall Media Center on. I have also installed drivers from dell resource DC and all drivers are ok.
The only problem is I cannot connect to the internet. The Lan is set to obtain IP adresses automatically but it only picks up the internal IP which is 169.254.19.217. I manually assigned an IP address from my range which was 192.168.0.7, subnet 255.255.255.0 and gateway 192.168.0.1 and DNS same as gateway and it connect to lan, but still no connection to internet. Error is DNS error. I have not installed any virus software, just OS and drivers.

The NIC is onboard the motherboard. I even took the battery and inserted it again as I have had similar problem on an HP machine and that worked. But I do not seem to connect to internet. I used the ethernet cable to connect to another dell machine and an IP address of 192.168.0.8
was automatically assigned. I have wiped the machine for the second time and re-installing Windows again, but need help to resolve connection issue.
Thanks Nicholil

 

Nicholil,

Can you ping the network from the Dell 3100 ?

If your not sure how to ping the network then:
Start
Click on Run.
Type in cmd
This will bring up a window.
At the cursor type ping www.yahoo.com and press enter.

Your looking for someting that looks like this:

C:\>ping www.yahoo.com

Pinging www-real.wa1.b.yahoo.com [69.147.76.15] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 69.147.76.15: bytes=32 time=53ms TTL=54
Reply from 69.147.76.15: bytes=32 time=54ms TTL=54
Reply from 69.147.76.15: bytes=32 time=54ms TTL=54
Reply from 69.147.76.15: bytes=32 time=55ms TTL=54

Ping statistics for 69.147.76.15:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 53ms, Maximum = 55ms, Average = 54ms

 

Two questions I just thought of ?

1. With the NIC being on the motherboard - is it enabled in the BIOS ?

2. Is the Network card disabled in Windows ?

Start
Settings
Network Connections
Then Click on the Local Area Connection to open it up.

There are 2 buttons. One shows Properties and the Other should show Disable.
If the one shows Enable then click on it and this will Enable the NIC (Network Interface Card)

 

As a test you can disable the on-board NIC and install an ethernet card and see if you can connect to the internet.

 

If you used a cable to connect machine to machine and are not going through a hub you have a cross-over cable which will "normally" not work connecting to a hub. Get a straight cable to connect to the hub. Also check around the RJ-45 jack and see if there are any lights, if they are lit while plugged into the other machine but not to the hub that will be another indicator. GL