I got a noggin' scratcher for ya. I use a router on a small network i have in my home to connect a few comps in diff rooms. Now, recently a rat chewed through the line that connects this particular box to the network, and because it was so close to the center of it, I just spliced the line back together w/ some electrical tape, and so far it works pretty well. Now...when i shut down my machine and reboot (i have both linux and xp on this machine, so i know its not w/ just one o/s) the network doesn't want to work. When I'm in XP, i run the little repair operation, it says the IP address part of the repair process could not be complete...yet i'm recieving bytes of data...verrrrry little however (according to XP :\).NOW...when i turn on one of the other boxes, and then run the repair process, it works fine, or if i reboot, and one of the other machines is one, nothing goes wrong, works perfectly...and the machine i use in particular has a BIOS password on it, and it never completely boots up, just goes to the BIOS password prompt. Now, I know replacing the cord would fix it guys...but i'm just curious as to how it makes any difference as to if another comp, that's using the same router would have any affect on a line that in no way corresponds with it, other than being connectd 2 the same router. Forgive me if i didn't explain it clear enough...but anyone w/ networking knowledge (which i obviously don't have) plz help me out?