I installed norton antivirus on min 2K and it killed my ethernet card. I have tried 3 cards and multiple slots. I can not get the driver to load and no IP.
I have gotten rid of norton.

When I load the driver it fails with the following error message.

"The inf or device information set or element does not match the specified install class"

I have been hacking at this for hours. any ideas?

Try repairing your connection with LSPFix

Thank you very much.
I tried that and it didn't correct the problem. This was a really sweet computer. I really hate to format and start over. I think there is probably some windows file that is corrupt. The LSPFix says that the files it looks for are normal. Any more ideas?

Have you pinged a server try pingin yahoo.

Go to Start then Run. Type in cmd and press enter. At the command prompt type in ping www.yahoo.com and press enter.

If you get 0% loss you have a connect. Please post the results.

ping yahoo sent back "unknown host"
I pinged another computer on my router and got back "destination unreachable". It claimed it sent 4 packets and got back none, but I have my doubts about that since IPCONFIG yields nothing.

Can you ping the router itself? Right now you can't reach the internet and you can't reach other computers - this leaves the router and your computer as possible sticking points.

If you aren't able to ping the router, and since you've tried other cards, then the issue must be with Windows settings.

First I'd try deleting your network connections and uninstall the device from Device Manager, then reboot and let Windows redetect the device and install the drivers (try and use the default drivers, but if Windows balks you may have to point it at the drivers that you have).

Once it's installed, run the Network Connection Wizard and the Network Setup Wizard and let them set the settings for you.

Then try to ping the router again. If successful, ping another computer on the network and www.yahoo.com to see if you're connected.

Again, Thanks to everybody that is trying to help.
The NIC card gives errors simply trying to load the driver. I have tried 2 ea Dlink ethernet cards and one realtek, all known to be good cards. I have tried all comninations of " found new hardware " and the device manger to load. The computer can not even ping itself, much less routers and other computers. I think the problem is with some sort of driver installation software that is part of windows. The message about " install class " could probably send me to the proper corrupted file if I knew windows well enough. The process of loading a driver from device manager is almost machine level. I know trhe drivers are good so it must be the executable that loads it, or a windows library file that is used to load the driver.
Keep in mind that I should be able to load the driver with no ethernet cable at all and no connection to any sort of ethernet devices. We are talking motherboard/ microprocessor, talking to the3 PCI bus and a circuitboad that converts that to TCPIP. That circuitboard must be instructed to make this conersion via windows and it is not happening. The normal MO for this type of problem is to reload the operating system. It has become a challenge not to do that.

Since it's presumed to be a Windows error, then you'll either have to rebuild the networking components and maybe even the installer components of Windows - or you'll have to do a repair install to fix them in one fell swoop.

I'd go with the repair install myself, it'll probably be easier in the long run: http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

Have you seen this support article from Microsoft? - An Inf Error Occurs During Installation of a Network Adapter on a Windows 2000-Based Computer

Please read through it carefully to ensure that it covers the problem that you are having.
If you do decide to edit the registry, please ensure that you read the Important and Warnings notices in the support article.

and
Also, make sure that you have backed up your data before you get to far into any of our suggested fixes. With all that said, I hope I haven't scared you off from trying to fix your issue...