I used to have an Acer Aspire One running Linux Linpus lite. It went wrong and, to cut a long story short, by the time I managed to get the recovery disk onto a memory stick the shop had returned it and got me a new one - a ZG8 running XP - and unfortunately I couldn't swap them back.
Apart from the fact I hate XP, it didn't seem to have the strength to pick up wireless signals when abroad, even though the Linux one had picked up those same signals. So I installed the Linux back on it today - and now I have no internet at all, not even wired!
I am very much a newbie with Linux, but by looking through forums I discovered lspci.
This tells me (I have to copy type it!):
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Attansic Technology Corp. Unknown device 1026 (rev b0)
02:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Unknown device 002b (rev 01)
If I do the long version, and I'm not logged in to Terminal as su, the entries say <Access denied> as well.
I've tried (without success) the solution given elsewhere in this forum for people who have had networking but then lost it, whereas although I had it with XP on the netbook I don't have it now.
My Netgear router can see the netbook, but I think I'm probably missing drivers - maybe the hardware of this one is different to the Linux one I had?
I'm going away on Tuesday, and really need to be connected (which is why I've put the Linux back on it) - would anyone be able to help me with which drivers I need (and where to get them from) (and where to put them!)?
I also have no sound (No volume control GStreamer plugins and/or devices found), and with the original Linux I could right click on the homepage and have all sorts of things come up - lists of things I could install - but not now (though I suspect that's partly due to lack of network). Also it can't find locate or updatedb. (I found something somewhere that told you what find commands to issue to search the hard drive for them)
I do hope I've provided enough information for someone out there to have an idea of what I need to do, but will happily provide more if needed.

I'm not sure what kernel version you are using . . . if you don't know, doing a 'uname -a' will let you know.

On version 2.6.33.4 (and probably others), you can try the following modules for the Atheros card:

ath
ath5k
ath9k
ath9k_common
ath9k_hw

(Just use 'modprobe' as root for each possibility to see if one recognizes the wireless card.)
You can check to see if the system has recognized a device after probing each module with a 'dmesg | tail'

After it is recognized and the driver is loaded, you can configure it as you did on your old machine. To ensure that the module is loaded at boot time, just insert the modprobe command into one of the system's startup scripts. I'm not familiar with Linpus, but on many systems you could use /etc/rc.d/rc.local

Finding the right module for your wired ethernet card can be a little harder, because there are so many candidates.

This guy:
http://grainy-squares.thetorturegarden.net/?p=327
seems to have put Ubuntu on the same machine that you have, and everything was recognized more or less out of the box, so clearly the kernel supports your hardware.

thank you so much for coming to my rescue!
uname -a results in the following: Linux localhost 2.6.23.9lw #105 SMP PREEMPT Fri Jun 27 18:56:59 EDT 2008 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

All of the modprobe commands you suggested result in FATAL: Module ath not found (depending on the module input).

I tried the CrunchBang suggestions for the card readers (not that I really know what a card reader is). Nothing happened after the first 2 instructions (in point 1) but the gksudo edit command resulted in bash: gksudo: command not found.

As previously mentioned, right clicking on the desktop does absolutely nothing.

I've googled the version number, but so far only come up with people looking for or posting the image - nobody seems to have the problem I've got! Think I'll try installing again, but that's more of a Windows thing to do than a Linux thing (or so I've always thought)

By the way, the System BIOS Version is 0.3117, the product name is A0531h, in case that's of any help

Okay . . .for that kernel version, try 'modprobe ath_pci'

BTW, what happens when you run 'alsaconf' as root? (For sound)

This guy has a module for your NIC:
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/wal2/atheros_attansic.html

If you were considering reinstalling, had you considered installing the Ubuntu Netbook Edition rather than Linpus?

modprobe ath_pci seems to do nothing, but if I then dmesg | grep ath I get:
ath_hal: 0.9.17.1 (AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413)
ath_dfs: Version 2.0.0
ath_rate_atheros: Version 2.0.1
ath_pci: 0.9.4.5 (Atheron/multi-bss)
ath_pci: Acer-5.3.2.14-2008-Sep-23

alsaconf results in "bash: aslaconf: command not found" and if I try sudo alsaconf (yes, I am logged in as root) I get "sudo: alsaconf: command not found".

I discovered last night that I had no audio group at all, so followed some instructions to create one. But I also found that "user" (the default user? what I seem to be when I boot up, anyway) is only a member of user and wheel. Wouldn't know how to allocate that user to audio group even if I got it working!
Also discovered that my 8Gb lifetime guarantee memory stick from Crucial doesn't work, so am now off to try and buy something so I can transfer stuff from this PC to the netbook to try and get this fixed!

OK, to update you, I've just installed Ubuntu and have sound and wired network.
A little unfamiliar with it - and keep getting parsing errors from something called Keyring - but hopefully I'll get it all worked out!
Would have been nice to work out what was wrong with the Linpus, given that it was an official recovery disk, but thanks for your help.