Hello lmtrider, Can you connect to the Laptop.  You may have to set your C: drive to shared. If you can, the ethernet card is working. If not, you may not have the network card drivers installed. Try going into the Control Panel and under Hardware Devices, look for the Network Devices and see if it has a yellow question mark or a red x on it. If it does, then the drivers are not installed or it has been disabled. If you see the network card without any question mark or red x, then there will be something keeping it from working. There are ways to deal with this, depending on what you find. First, if the yellow question mark is there, I would install the network card drivers from the Utility/Drivers disk. If there is a red x, click on the network card and choose "enable". If you see the card listed but have no question mark or red x, right click on the network card and choose "uninstall". You will be prompted "are you sure", choose yes and reboot. The OS will find the card when it comes to the desktop and try to install the drivers for it. If all this fails, you might try using another computer to go the Dell site and search for the network drivers for your system, if you do not have the drivers disk. Let us know how this turns out. If not successfully, then we can try something further.

Thanks so much for your expert advice.  Indeed, I needed to load the network drivers, as well as the others from the dvd.

My Dimension is once again fully operational thanks to you and a few others who offered me invaluable assistance via this forum.

Vince