Discussions

Okay dudes and dudettes, here's the deal.  
 
I got two computers. One is my personal desktop, the other is the computer my family uses. A while back we recently did some renovations and I just hooked the family computer back up.  
 
First, it did not want to connect to the router, but mine did. After testing the cable on my laptop (I use this at school, so Im not including it in this scenario), it worked no problem plugged in direct off the router. Since my other computer runs off my router as well, obviously modem and router are go.  
 
So that pointed to a faulty onboard NIC on the motherboard. No problem, I went and got a nice easy PCI NIC card and plugged it in, fired up the drivers, no problem. Worked fine.  
 
Now tonight, it will not connect again. I looked at it plugged in, there were green lights. Thinking maybe there was a loose connection, I unplugged it then plugged it back in, now there are no lights at all. What gives here? Is it possible that this NIC card may have gone bad as well? It only ran me about $40, but still, this is just over 24 hours and it might have gone bad already? I tried plugging it into the original NIC, still no luck. I still keep getting the "Local Area Connection Cable Unplugged" message, when I know the cable is good, I even put new ends on it. (I made the damn thing )  
 
Is my computer posessed?  
 
For the record the problem machine is running Windows XP