I have just installed a dual boot setup with Windows XP Professional SP2 and Ubuntu 7.04 on a DELL Inspiron 1501.
While I did the installation no cable was plugged into the NIC.

After plugging a network cable into the NIC I'm having the problem that Ubuntu recognizes and can work with the NIC without any problems, but in Windows XP I can't get the LAN connection to show up in Network Connections. So I have therefore narrowed down the problem as not being on the hardware side.
I tried running the Add Hardware wizard with the installation CD inside and instructed the wizard to find the drivers automatically, but it came back empty.

Any ideas how I can take this forward?

Does the NIC show up in the device manager ? (right-click 'my computer' > Manage > Device Manager)

This is what shows up in the device manager (I had to transfer the screenshot via USB stick to my Internet-connected PC):

I also tried using netsh to troubleshoot, but it gives me this output, which made me suspect the whole issue has to do with my obsession for stopping unnecessary services on any fresh installations of XP.
[console]C:\>netsh -c diag

WARNING: Could not obtain host information from machine: [CRISUD]. Some commands may not be available.
The RPC server is unavailable.

netsh diag>exit

C:\>net start
These Windows services are started:

Application Layer Gateway Service
Cryptographic Services
DHCP Client
Network Connections
Network Location Awareness (NLA)
Plug and Play
Print Spooler
Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Locator
Security Center
Server
Shell Hardware Detection
SSDP Discovery Service
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
Universal Plug and Play Device Host
Windows Audio
Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS)
Windows Installer
Windows Management Instrumentation
Workstation

The command completed successfully.

C:\>[/console]

This post has been edited by dserban: Sep 27 2007, 09:06 AM

It looks like I have to manually download and install the drivers:
http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/...tid=&impid=
I'm doing that as we speak, will see how that goes.

The ethernet controller with the question mark is your LAN NIC. You need to install the driver for it. If you can't get the right driver, what you can do is, open the property of that device, goto the "Detail" tab. In the combo box, the default selected item should be Device Instance Id. In the text box bellow, you should see something like "PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV0266......"

The VEN_10DE is the vendor code. Put that and the DEV code into google, you should get some reply mentioning the make and model of your device. From there, it's easier to look for the driver. For some rarer devices, it might be harder to target the DEV, so just use the VEN code.

Good Luck