something blocking adapters from getting out

[popman]

Hello,
I have an older Gateway laptop M350WVN w/XP Home given to me by a friend. It appears that network adapters are not hooking up with the router (hard wire and wireless) but they seem like they want to work as I get a good signal and such. I even disabled both and installed a USB adapter. I cannot ping the router either. I did look into the router admin and found that it is at least receiving a MAC address but no IP address is being issued. I also tried to IPconfig and the request is not being supported. something is messing with the packets sending and receiving. 2 other computers are working fine on the router. I do suspect a virus or something bad but I would like to check here first.

thanks

[Midknyte]

Are you sure the adapters are set for DHCP?

Once you verify that, you can try the winsock fix.
http://majorgeeks.com/WinSock_XP_Fix_d4372.html

I have an older Gateway laptop M350WVN w/XP Home given to me by a friend.

Is there a reason you didn't reformat the drive? That's the first thing I do when I get a "donated" system. You never know what kind of junk is on there.