Open a command prompt on the laptop.. We are trying to connect the laptop to your router using your new pc card..so when we use the ipconfig command, it will tell us a lot about the state of your laptops connectivity... It doesn't matter if the laptop was never connected to a router before...
If it gives you a default gateway address (the default gateway address is the IP address for the router...You'll know what I mean when you use the command), ip address, and subnet mask... Then we have determined that your cable is good because if the cable wasn't good then the dhcp server on your router would not be able to assign your computer an ip address... In other words, it could just be that a link light is out on your router...
However, the cable could still be good if you don't have an ip address assigned to your computer (as indicated with the IPCONFIG command), we would simply have to isolate the problem further... However, having no link light on the router when connecting is a good sign that the cable is not send/receiving and that the cable could be bad...
