Yeah, everything is plugged in correctly.

Although your suggestion may remedy a Local Area Connection that is not responding (i.e. disconnected), SB's problem is that he does not *have* a Local Area Connection to begin with...

This is most likely a problem w/ the NIC - either it was improperly installed or configured... Check in Device Manager and see if there isn't a little "!" next to your ethernet card... If there is, go to the NIC manufacturers site and d/l the latest drivers, and reinstall the NIC... If there isn't... well... then I'm stumped...
There was no "!" but I updated the driver just in case and that didn't help at all. The drivers have been uninstalled and installed multiple times (so I'm quite sure that won't help ^_^). Thank you much though wiskic. Other suggestions etc?