PC not "seeing" the LAN connect - XP Home

[Toad]

#1 son bought a puter off E-Bay, arrives with a virus.

We format the HD, reinstall XP Home and find out the MB has the wrong bios. Flash the correct bios, everything seems to work.

It "sees" the cable LAN internet connect in Control Panel/Network Connections but when you start Explorer it can't find the 'net.

Ideas?

We've done the Internet Options/setup connection routine ad nauseaum.

[qts]

Explorer shouldn't see the Internet!

Internet Explorer should. You need to perform a few basic tests.

You've installed the network card driver and TCP/IP, haven't you?

Go to a command prompt.

Type 'ping 127.0.0.1' sans quotes and press enter. You should see Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128 four times. Any negative message here indicates that TCP/IP has not been installed or is not working. Assuming that works you need to find out what IP address you've been assigned. Type 'ipconfig /all' and press enter. Try pinging yourself. Error messages indicate that TCP/IP is not properly installed. Try pinging the DNS server listed. This will show network connectivity.

[Toad]

Thanks, qts!

I'll forward that on to him