LAN connection unplugged – but it isn’t!

I’ve just reformatted a win XP Pro machine and am using an 3com ethernet card which has installed fine and is showing in the hardware setup.

I have a network cable connected to the card but it is reported as ‘LAN connection unplugged’ – but it certainly is plugged in.

During the reformat I chose not to connect to a network – I think maybe this is causing the problem.
Can anyone tell me how to get the network card connected and working???

I have recently plugged the same network cable into a different machine (running vista) and that worked fine so i pretty much know it’s not a prob with the cable/socket.

Thanks