IRQ conflict

I need some help with IRQ stuff. My roommate has a Sony Vaio laptop and he isn't able to get connected to the internet through his NIC. I believe it's a Intel PRO/VE 10/100 NIC. Anyways, it's not receiving any packets or info or anything. It's not saying there are any conflicts, but i think it has something to do with an IRQ conflict. Does this sound right? If not, what are some possibilities to this problem?

I forgot how to check what IRQs are used by what hardware. It's WinXP Home as well.

Thanks.

oh, and if it could be answered tonight, that would be appreciated; I'd like to try and save my roommate some money, since the school tech guy wants to do some USB connection and he'd have to pay more.

I doubt its an IRQ problem; unless its ISA hardware (not on a vaio).

I would imagine thats it's a network configuration problem.

What OS?

Are you using DHCP or static settings?

Can you ping localhost?

Can you ping another machine on the same subnet?

Can you ping the world?

Are your DNS setting correct?

well, they just set him up with an ethernet to usb adapter; so it works now.