network is connected, but doesn't receive anything

[Stern]

this guy came in to install a wireless network receiver, and we put the receiver up in the tree, bring the wire down to the house, and first connect it to my parents computer to try it out, which is an ancient P2 without a firewall running win98. we goto the tcp settings, set up the ip, gateway, and dns, try to connect to the internet, and it works perfectly.

so we plug it into my own computer, which is winxp sp2(firewall disabled) running zonealarm. i put in all exactly the same info as we used in parents comp, zonealam detects a new network and i add it to trusted zone, and i try and ping the wireless receiver thats on the tree.
nada, its just not working some how. i tried disabling zonealarm, tried all sorts of things.
anything anyone can suggest?

 

[Stern]

seems theres something wrong with the onboard network card of the motherboard (MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR)
I took the card from my parents comp and plugged it into mine, and zonealarm discovered the network like before, but it also added an ip address to the trusted zone which it called "Loopback adapter" 127.0.0.1

Now it all works fine, apart from Windows Update. That doesn't work at all, on any of the computers.
It says checking to see if i have the right version of windows update, then instead of being replaced by the choice of "custom" or (whatever else)
, it says "The website has encountered a problem and cannot display the page you are trying to view. The options provided below might help you solve the problem. " below are links to FAQ, Find Solutions, Windows Update Newsgroup and Microsoft Online Assisted Support