All depends on the machine to be honest.

Unplug the linux box from the power, take the casing off via removal of the screws in the rear... locate the slot that your network card is in, take out the retaining screw..and move it up or down a slot or two... it will only fit into the white PCI slots. Fitting is the opposite of removal.... funnly enough!

Try that first... if that doesnt work, when the linux machine first powers on just after the beep, i would suggest holding the delete key (may be different on yours) to access the Bios, from there navigate the menu's looking for the section entitled 'PnP OS Support' and set it to no, obvously saving changes before exiting....

Failing that, your network card could just be faulty... its cheap enough to buy a replacement.... i my self would test the network card in my Windows box before ruling it out as totally U/S.

Good Luck!

-Tek

network card built in to mother board....tried the bios thing...didnt seem to work.....eth0 still failed on boot up

You can still always disable an onboard network card, of course, by putting a new one in and then disabling it in the bios.

...... so there isnt any solution to it... all i want is when i boot up the linux that it doesnt say "failed" under the eth0 part....do u know how to fix that...i dont have another network card u see

I know you don't . I had a spare one up until recently, though, you can go to that computer market I told you about, they only cost around £8. Considering all the things you've already tried, I'd say that could possibly be the problem. On-board network cards always tend to be pretty cheap, quality-wise.

yeah looks like your running out of options im afraid.

Does the command 'lspci' show anything related to ethernet's and if so what make? for exampleon my box it states...

00:11.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] (rev 74)
00:13.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] (rev 74)

- btw you can pick up the same 3com 100Mbit cards for like £2.00 each on itdealers.co.uk ..and if having a new one doesnt work, u havent lost alot of money whilst trying to fault find!

i know the network card works cus i used to use it on the same box except i had windows os on it....i installed linux and thats when my problems began

when i type in the command the stuff about ethernet comes up as follows:

00:01.1 Ethernet controller: Silicon Intergrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 10/100 Ethernet (rev82)

OK - now try typing 'lsmod' - does it list anything called sis900 ? also is there a 1 or a 0 allocated? example on mines it shows...

Module Size Used by Not tainted
3c59x 25456 2

if theres nothing like sisxxx or sis900 - try 'modprobe sis900' or 'insmod sis900' - if you dont get any errors, try checking to see if it now sees the interface... 'ifconfig eth0'

i got "sis900 19268 0"
i then typed 'modprobe sis900' and nothing happened....so then i typed 'insmod sis900' and it said " no such file or directory"...it detects eth0

ok

now try the following....

ifconfig eth0 down
ifconfig eth0 192.168.100.5
route add default gw 192.168.100.1

then try and ping 192.168.100.1 (I'm assuming your Winows PC is on and you have used the internet connection sharing wizard on it) - also ensure the network cable is attached before doing anything with the ethernet.

..and on that note its near 10PM and I hear a spliff calling my name :P if im still about tonight i'll try help you, failing that it will be tomorrow dude.

HEEELLP MEE

A splif? You'll miss nip/tuck. I'm outta here.

have u read back fully over all the posts....lets start at the beginning
u have win xp and linux machines.........
ur network cards in each machine is recognised
in bios ur network card in linux is recognised
lets try cable...the cable u r using are u sure it is a crossover cable ? or is it a cable that u would plug into a hub?
In winxp u have ran the internet connection sharing wizard? this will give u an ip address for that machine as 192.168.0.1 and a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0

So in linux we will follow the same numbers and where we have 192.168.0.1 we will change the 1 to a 2
192.168.0.2 and subnet mask of the same 255.255.255.0

so in /etc/resolve.conf u r going to have ur nameserver (which is the winxp machine 192.168.0.1)
so when u edit this file u r going to add that for example
nameserver 192.168.0.1

when u try to connect to the internet it will go to this address to look for a connection ( it will `resolve` it)

the next thing is u need to decide whether u want to statically give the linux machine this address so that when u try to connect to the internet it will automatically look for winxp or whether u want to `dynamically` assign it which simpluy means ur computer will try to find the address when u want to connect..

I think ur main problem at the moment lies with the type of connection u have to link the 2 computers. You cannot just plug a cable in that is meant for a `hub` and I think this is what u may have.

Just to add to mermxx's post, with a relatively small number of machines, I've found it much less of a headache to use static ip addresses for the lot. About the crossover cable have a look at this.

http://www.makeitsimple.com/how-to/dyi_crossover.htm

good luck.