My Dell Inspiron 1526 has a mini card for wireless internet connection

Just in case this should still be an issue :) pam, Ping is a computer network administration utility used to test the reachability of a host on an Internet Protocol (IP) network and to measure the round-trip time for messages sent from the originating host to a destination computer. The name comes from active sonar terminology.

Ping operates by sending Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request packets to the target host and waiting for an ICMP response. In the process it measures the time from transmission to reception (round-trip time)[1] and records any packet loss. The results of the test are printed in form of a statistical summary of the response packets received, including the minimum, maximum, and the mean round-trip times, and sometimes the standard deviation of the mean.

So simplified it is that your computer makes a call to another number (IP) and measure how long it took to connect and to return with the data. If you can not connect to the other computer (IP adress) you get a fail.

First off. Restart your computer. Restart your router or your modem since I am not sure how you connect. Make sure that all Cables are connect properly.

It is most likely a software issue related to your hardware. What I would do just to test this is to uninstall my wireless network.

Click Start, and then click Control Panel.

Click system

Click hardware

click device manager

you should now see the devices on your computer. Make sure that none of your devices has a question mark on it.

go to the Network adapter and find your wireless adapter.

Uninstall the device. (Right the proper name down just in case you need to get a driver for it)

After that I would reboot the computer. This time around Windows should find your network adapter and reinstall it. If it does not find it, you may have some hardware problems with the network adapter.

That is for the hardware part. For the setup of a wireless network here are a few links that will help http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer... and http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using...

Please let us know how you are progressing. I know that this can get extremely frustrating. So do one thing at a time, if you do to much at once you will lose sight over what needs to be done. this can be tedious and a royal PITA to get straight but patience will prevail....good luck and let us know.