Dell Inspiron 2500

[NCLREZ]

I had this problem, and see there's "many" others out there with the same problem-

The reason/solution is rather simple- yet not obvious.

Back in early 2000's, Dell sold these laptops with a NIC card as included equipment...HOWEVER... for the Nic card to work, you had to purchase a PCMCIA card, Which most people didn't know. and now when people are attempting to upgrade to Windows XP, ( often because the NIC card didn't work with Windows ME) , like everyone thinks this will resolve the issue.... BUT... it still doesn't work... this, probably 99.9% of the time is the reason...

You need to uinstall a PCMCIA card...