I've had to do a reinstall of W2K on a Dell Inspiron 2500, but I am stumped when trying to establish ethernet connectivity. There is an ethernet socket but it does not activate when plugging in the network cable, and there is no sign of it in devices, or indeed when I query the BIOS. Despite the presence of the ethernet socket, the BIOS simply says "Modem" under attached devices. I am now wondering if this ethernet socket is just that, a socket, but there is no hardware card or device actually to enable inside the laptop.

Can anyone help with this?

Certainly there seem to be no compatible drivers on the Dell download site, except possible one, for an Actiontec combi modem/ethernet device. However, the installed modem these drivers install gets a yellow exclamation mark in device manager, and when I try to install the "ethernet" side of this device, no compatible hardware is listed during the install.

So, in effect, is the bad news that this ethernet socket in the latpop is effectively a "dummy" with no compatible hardware inside that can actually be activated?

Anyway any thoughts on this pesky problem?!

 

Paul