This morning both Kubuntu 7.10 systems were broke. Was it overnight updates or some programs installed overnight?
Whatever the cause, one system tells me network-manager is broke, it has no ethernet connection. Also it will not let me access CD it was installed from to install network-manager again; Krusader is gone & Dolphin can't ("feature only available with HAL") access Kubuntu 7.10 CD.
New install would be quick answer but i want to learn how to repair system.
How do I install network-manger from CD? And why did Kubuntu install without documentation? Help function always says "not installed".

Don't see how this could happen without you doing it but try checking your privileges perhaps they got changed. Should be in the control center under Users and Groups or something to that affect. Make sure your user is in the cdrom group.You might also have to run afterwards to give user read/write privileges. Try that first it's all I can come up with right now.

Strange thing... I don't know any package manager or program installing things on its own... so, I suppose you did some update... perhaps a package dependent on the one you updated was also installed leading to this strange behavior and the non working networkmanager.

try to check the following:
provide us please the output of "ifconfig". did you try to disable networkmanager and to configure your network via the classical ifup, ifdown method? what type of system you are talking about? suppose you run a server or something since it was running over night... a little bit more of information would be very helpful