Connection to the Internet

I do not think that this applies as a software question, but I couldn't find a more appropriate section. My question is about my internet connection on another computer. It has been disconnected from a modem since December of 2003, and some months after that time I got sick of the local area connection in the bottom right hand corner of my screen (on the taskbar) telling me that it was disconnected, so I disabled it. Now, I've just hooked my computer up to a modem, but I am unable to reconnect the internet. It says that my local area connection has been reenabled, but when I try to repair it it says that it cannot find my ip address. When I look at the properties in the lan connection section of the control panel (I have Windows XP), it says that my ip address is zero. Does anyone know what might be going wrong?

Thanks!

 

1. are you using a dial-up modem or broadband?
2. is your net card enabled in bios?
3. does your motherboard have any on-borad modems?
4. did you use the connection wizard and follow the right procedure?
5. did you go to control panel and see what is listed under internet connections?
6. did you go to your hardware listing and make sure there are no additional modems listed and that the present modem is not checked in yellow?
7. are your drivers recognized by winxp?