Ethernet Port on Laptop Broken?

[MurphmanL]

Basically I've got my newly aqquired laptop running quite well now, it runs xp just fine and does everything I need it to do, except one thing.
The laptop is the Compaq Armada M700 notebook, P3 750mhz edition.

As you can see from the specs, the notebook does have onboard 10/100 ethernet from chipmaker intel. However I cannot for the life of me get the ethernet controller to work!
It doesn't show up anywhere on the System Devices screen, it doesn't appear under Add New hardware wizard, installing the Intel Network Driver and management software doesn't kick start it, it's nowhere to be found in Network connections, and manually installing built in xp intel network motherboard drivers doesn't work either, just get a friendly "The device cannot start" message.

So basically the device isn't functioning it seems. It looks exactly like and most likely is an ethernet port, the only reason im dubious is because my ethernet cable seems a little looser than my desktop pc fit. Must be just a portable thing. Anyway ive checked in the BIOS and onboard networking enable or anything of such sort is anywhere to be found.

So the question i propose to you is, do you think this networking controller is fooked, perhaps the internal circuits are severed or something? Or do you think this is a problem with the XP os?
Whatever it is its really bugging me. Perhaps a flash of the latest bios would help to 2001 edition?
Any feedback would be really appreciated!

[Dougal]

Have you looked in the BIOS, normally under onboard devices, to see if its disabled?

If it is broken you can get a PCMCIA one cheap.

[MurphmanL]

all i can appear to find is Parallel port, Display adaptor and a few other useless settings... incredibly weird. Seems as if the port never existed in the 1.00 bios revision :/ Considering im using the original bios, updating it would be a good plan which i will try tomorrow. But the addition of Ethernet controler to bios in the revision history is not stated on the compaq site. One would get the impression it is just disabled, but then again would a severed internal connection create the same effect? or would it show up as some rogue device?

[Matt1eD]

Are you certain it is an ethernet port. Some manufacturers (Certainly a few years ago) will have one then just disable it and have that on the slightly better model which uses the same case and mobo.

Certainly a friend had that with his Dell (tis about four and a half years old now)