x40 wont connect to wifi/ethernet for internet

[614joe]

This is for my friend.
He got a x40 from his mom for free because his desktop crashed. Well this x40 is from his moms business (its an old business laptop) and it has ALL this stuff on it software wise for her business. This is her business site http://www.cottsystems.com/

This laptop is tighter than a elephant in a rabbit hole. There are admin profiles that are through her work that the computer won't let me get rid of, even when using one of the admin profiles I can't. The main problem is we can't get the internet to work with our internet. The computer will not show any wireless internet connections when there are multiple ones in the house. Then we tried a software on the computer through ibm to connect to wireless routers or what ever and it shows our router and 100% signal strength, but when we go to connect it wont allow us. (yes we put in the code for our wifi). We then tried the ethernet cord, the little bubble pops up from the start bar saying "100mbps connection" bla bla bla. But we go to internet explorer and that website listed above pops up and we can not go to ANY site. For ex. we tried google, it shows it was trying to go to it, then it freezes up and says the page cannot be displayed.

I even turned ALL the firewall off for EVERYTHING and allowed all settings and connections and everything, nothing seems to allow either internet connection to work.

It's like you can not do anything to the computer lol its annoying. I can not find any reason WHY it just won't connect to the internet.

Soooo. Do you guys have any tips for me to get this thing working?
I do have a T30 XP Home recovery disk for my computer, but this is an X40 with XP professional....will my T30 recovery disk work for his X40? Because just starting over without all that business crap seems the easiest route.

thanks.

[Magreve]

(a) are the network items enabled? If wireless is disabled, it won't connect.
(b) does the hard drive have room to breath? e.g., 10% free? If not, you can slow yerself down so much it looks like a glacier.
(c) if you plug in the correct network wire between PC and your home router, can it see the router? e.g., http:\\your_router_ip_here (e.g. 192.168.15.1) ... even if you can't log in to router, can you _get_ to it? if not, you've got a problem with your network card(s), and must start there.
(d) is your home wireless router set to one frequency, but your PC wireless router set to _another_ ... e.g., if you've got portable phones, those can interfere, or your neighbor's network can interfere ... so sometimes the router's / PC's frequency must be set manually.
(e) is somehow the network card disabled at the bios? or when you right click my computer and choose manage, and look at at devices ... do the net card(s) / interfaces show errors? do the error logs show errors?

Something in the above should be out of whack, and you have to whack it back.
Good luck!

[614joe]

a. Yes
b. Nope 8% . I'm going to take my usb over with Tuneup Utilities on it to clear up room and i'm going to try and delete some of the software he will not use. Though it's surprisingly fast with only 8% free space.

c,d, and e I will check out tomorrow when I head back over there. Thanks!