Have you shut down your computer since this happened?
Removed the network adapter icon/entry in Device Manager and then re-booted to re-discover?
Made sure the adapter is set to Full Power and not 'Allow Windows to power off this device'?

Yes done all that, same problem

yes i am running windows xp sp2, there are not extra firewalls on my system all i use is windows firewall i have tryed disabling it. there is no change

i got so fedup with it i wiped my hard drice clean and it works now, it was obviously a software fault or something. thanks for you help anyway

If you can 'borrow' a USB Ethernet network adapter than you may be able to isolate the problem to the original hardware?

That was a good decision! :smileyvery-happy: