You can try reloading your nic drivers from the dell driver support site but it sounds like the NIC has failed. If there are no lights on the network connector on the comuter side then indeed it would most likely be bad.

Since NIC is part of the motherboard you cannot replace it without replacing the motherboard. Your best bet at the moment would be to go pick up a PCI  10/100 etherne plug in card. they are very inexpensive less than $20 and proably closer to $10.

Wow, I just found a TRENDnet 32-bit PCI 10/100 Adpater with ACPI Wake-on-LAN TE100-PCIWA for $9.99, I think I will buy that, The light is not coming on next to the eithernet when I plug it in, so I am pretty sure that it is bad, I was just not sure how to replace it after opening the computer up and seeing how it is attached to the main board. I'm guessing once I plug the new card in, it will show up in the control panel under network connections and that I should then "disable" the current one and "enable" the new one.

I wasn't sure if I could buy a NIC card with an eithernet jack on it and the computer would recognize that input when I attached the eithernet cable to it over PCI  10/100 etherne plug on the motherboard, but I'll definately give it a try now. Thank you so much for your help!!!

Even though it is proably bad I would go into the bios and disable the onboard nic when you get ready to install the card.

Yea it should just be plug an pray play