Hi
I am an absolute newbie to Linux. I have installed Mandrake 8.1. While configuring the network , i was prompted for the network provider details.

"Please fill or check the field below
Provider name (ex previder.net)
Provider dns 1(optional)
Provider dns 2(optional)
Account login (user name)
Account password
"
i am using an ADSL MODEM (Speedtouch 510) and i configured it using windows xp. recently i plugged in a laptop running windows xp and i was not prompted for the login details. so i assume that anything plugged in would not need to have the login details.

so i hit cancel on the network provider details.

I have a D-Link DFE-530TX network card, when i tried to configure it, i ran into problems. i could not find the module. I was suggested to use the Via Rhine module, however it said
Loading module VIA VT86C100A Rhine II, 3043 Rhine I failed.

some one suggested 8139, so i tried to install the Realtek RL-8139, it failed too

With the Realtek RTL 8129/8139 ,it said do you have another one, followed by
"no ethernet network adaptor has been detected on your system.
I cannot set up this connection type."

i hit cancel couple of times, and the setup ran ok, the machine rebooted.

when i logged in, when i clicked on internet, it came up with a dialog box which said
"In order to run "netmonitor" with root privileges, additional information is required. so i typed in the password.
and it came up with network monitoring, however this was a grey box which did not respond. I finally had to use XKill to kill the program(does XKill kill the program).

the computer is very much connected to the net, i have tried windows xp and donw quite a bit of surfing.

please help me get onto the internet

I'm not sure how adsl works with linux, really, since I have a cable modem.

When I found that I couldn't access the network and was getting no response from my router, cable modem or anything else for no discernible reason it turned out that shorewall was enabled. When I disabled it (my router has its own firewall.) everything worked.

The correct module for your D-Link DFE-530TX is the VT86C100A [Rhine 10/100] (module name: via-rhine).

Maybe Linux didn't detect it for some reason. To display a list of all PCI devices in the system, type: lspci

i know it sounds really stupid, but i am an absolute newbie.
but where do i type lspci?

open a terminal window and type it there

really embarassed, how do i open a terminal window

no reason to be embarassed. no one expects you to know everything about linux from the start.

a terminal window is like the old windows "MS DOS Prompt" application they used to put in windows. It just puts you into the linux command prompt to execute text-based commands and applications (since open-source has a lot of them.)

to get to it, just look for applications called Terminal or Konsole. if you're running KDE as your desktop environment, it'll be Konsole. if you're running Gnome as your Desktop Environment, it'll be Terminal.

once in there, just type in the command he told you to use. It might say you don't have permission or that there's no such command. if it DOES, then type:

su root

then type in your root password when it asks you to.

then type the command in again.

i use rh9 but i presume its a similar setup goto what is ur start icon/main menu bottom left hand corner and system tools and look for terminal. but I think u may want to try and explore ur linux system a little bit more and get used to where things are ....explore a bit. Open folders and see what is where open programs and see what they are about. Better still read some tutorials.
If all u want to do is connect to the net then windoze is ur best option. If u want to learn a new system then try and walk b4 u can run
Having said that am pleased to offer any help should u need it. :-)