We've been having some problems with the notebook recently; the notebook can't conect to, use or find the internet.  It's likely that our rather crappy  notebook is simply broken, but we're not about to give up untill every possible option has been tried.  I have gone to the Dell website recenty on our working computer, and found their support page, which has extensive downloads, including networking related downloads and fixes.  To get to this site type in www.Dell.com, then click on the big blue-button question mark.  Once there, choose your compute type/model and number and the OS you currently have installed.  We downloaded the networking files (internet is our only problem so far) to the desktop and then transfered them to a USB device we had pluged in to the USB port.  Then, we we safely ejected the USB device and then entered the USB device into the notebook.  We first tried this with Vista, but after a long session of computer induced insanity, we decided this would not work, so now we're trying with windows.  Once you have the USB device inside of the notebook and you are powered up and logged in, it's time to transfer the downloaded files onto the notebook (or whatever other computer you might have).  First open 'My Computer' and click into the drive labled 'Local Disc C', once you've clicked in there, right click anywhere in the unocupied space and select the 'new' opion on the drop down menu, then choose 'new folder' on the seccond drop down menu, and name it somthing like 'Updates'.  Double click on the updates folder and create another new folder inside it, that will be called the 'Dell' or (whatever make your computer might be) folder.  Once you have all the folders written up, stay on that page, and go to the drive that the USB device is pluged in, most likely the 'F' drive.  Instead of searching for the downloaded files by clicking everywhere, just double click the 'F' drive icon, and you'll find a list of the USB devices' contents, select only the files you downloaded, and then click and drag them to the 'Dell' (or whatever you may have named it) file.  A downloading bar should appear on the screen and when it's finished you're good to go.