Sound/ethernet recurring problem

I'm not sure if this should be in hardware or drivers, but from the symptoms, I decided on hardware.

Okay, my girlfriend got her computer back from the a repair shop about a year and a half ago and since then, the computer reads that it has no sound device. Also, when she finally got high speed internet, the program said she had no ethernet device, and nothing happens when you plug the ethernet plug in either. I finally decided to check inside the computer, and it turns out the sound card and the ethernet card were both loose because the lever that goes over the pci and agp cards was broken, so i plugged those in and tried to jerry-rig the little lever, and when I did that, the video quit working, and i figured i might have messed the card up somehow, so i bought a cheap new pci card because i didn't know if i messed up the card or the port, so i got a new card that goes in a different port. that didn't work, so eventually i just bought a barebones computer that came with onboard sound, onboard video, and onboard ethernet, all for about 25 bucks. so i switched over the modem, the power supply, the hard drive, and cd-rw drive. those are the only things they have in common, the new computer even came with a processor. so i take it to her house, plug it in, and what happens? the computer reads no sound device and no ethernet port. i tried headphones and they didn't work either, so it's not the speakers, and even if the speakers were bad, the computer should be reading a sound device. I tried installing some drivers and it didn't work. The original computer was a Dell Dimension 4500, and the barebones was a Dell Optiplex GX260.

I have no clue why this would be happening, unless it's the same cable that powers it and that part of the power supply's bad, or if it goes through the hard drive and she needs a new hard drive... Someone please help.

 

It's probably a driver problem. The drivers for the on board sound and ethernet are not installed (or not installed correctly).
Sound driver: http://support.dell.com/support/dow...=-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=3&fileid=67126
Ethernet driver: according to the Dell web site, there's 3 possible ethernet adapters that may be installed. Apparently all GX260's are not the same:
3Com driver: http://support.dell.com/support/dow...=-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=5&fileid=58953
Intel LOM Gigabit driver: http://support.dell.com/support/dow...=-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=5&fileid=86705
Intel 8254x 1000 driver: http://support.dell.com/support/dow...=-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=5&fileid=64589
So, give those a shot, and you should be OK. Keep in mind, these drivers are for Windows XP....

hd2k

Try using Everest (link: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4181) or UnknownDevices (link: http://majorgeeks.com/Unknown_Devices_d3908.html) to figure out exactly which ethernet adapter is actually installed.