Dell w/ connectivity problems

I have a customer with a new ( as of beginning of Mar ) DEll Dimenion 4700. He is also running a small network with a D-link 5 port hub ( de-805tp ). The other computers are various models running windows 98se. His problem ( well one of them - he's had many since the dell arrived ) is that network issue..... two actually. When it does connect he cannot pull up document files from the rest of the network. He gets an error along the lines of wrong format or some such. ( the dell has office2003 and the others various Office 97 or 2000). However if you take the file and copy it ( even through the network and then open it on the dell it works fine. He had it in here and the winsock was corrupted and I restored that. Now besides that issue at times it comes up and says that it has limited or no connectivity. He does have mcaffee but only the av is turned on. he is running winxp home sp2. Now the reason they have such an assortment of computers is they are a non-profit orginization that lives on donations for the most part. Even the dell was something someone donated ( he baought if for him )

Any ideas and the least expensive fixes possible would be appreciated.

First thought that comes to mind... does it happen to be a SiS900 network adapter... cause I'm some REALLY F'd up crap happening with those lately... even if it isn't have you tried another network card? That was my first off the wall thought...

Something else I might try is to toss on another HD and install windows and see if it works then...

If it still does it then with a new installation and a new network card then I'd probably check out the hub... but that seems exceedingly unlikely... maybe a slightly bad network cable?

I'm just typing whatever I can think of... and that's about it...

The limited or no connectivity thing can mean no DHCP server available. Is there one? Have you tried static addresses? Any un-needed protocols installed? Update driver for nic?

Just some thoughts.

thanks both of you. I don't think there is a dhcp server but not sure. I wasn't the one doing the onsite. It seems to work fine on our network here but I was unable ( couldn't just close the store ) to go out and test on-site. Hopefully we will be fully staffed tomorrow and I can send someone out to check it onsite.

let us know either way :)