trouble going from dial up to dsl

I have a dell laptop from 2004 that I have used with att.net dial up service. I had my local phone co.(frontier) come to install a dsl line yesterday. The tech could not get the computer to display the internet. He said the computer would not let him see the ethernet card. He tried to establish a network but was unable to & left ,telling me to call dell. Dell said to check the ethernet cable connecting the modem to the computer. That is connected. Frontiers help line said to tell dell that they need to give me a local area connection created so the computer can pick IP from the modem. Dell had me try a bunch of things none of which worked. I can't believe this should be so difficult. I gave up & went back to dial up for now. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Doug

Quote:

Dell said to check the ethernet cable connecting the modem to the computer.

First, try another ethernet cable. Maybe the one you are using is bad. It happens.

Next, go into device manager. Can you see your NIC? Does it have a yellow ! or red x ?

Are you running a firewall? If so what? It could be that your firewall is blocking traffic from the dsl modem to your computer.

Quote:

He said the computer would not let him see the ethernet card.

If that is what he said, that would seem to indicate that your NIC is not showing up in the device manager.
If you do not see th NIC in device manager, call Dell and see if you need to turn it on in the BIOS. I know wifi sometimes needs to be turned on but I'm not sure about an ethernet card.