Can not get network to obtain an ip address through DHCP.

When i try activating my network card I get the error message determining ip information for eth0... failed; no link present. Check cable.

I have searched this error message in Google but i could not find anything that would help me.

Has anyone come across this before?

I am really new to Linux and i am sure its a silly mistake i have made.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Did you check the cable? Is it the right cable (crossed? straight?)
Is there a dhcp server running on the other end?
If you are 100% sure the cable works, try on the command line 'dhclient eth0' and post the output.

Forgive my ignorance I am very new to Linux (today)

By command line is that the same as the “terminal”. Because I ran dhclient eth0 and it returned nothing.

I assume the cable works fine as my windows laptop was able to obtain an IP address from the router via the same cable.

Normally, dhclient will either hang a little while trying then print an error or succeed and return immediately.
You say it returned nothing... Do you mean it hanged (you couldn't type anything on the terminal)? Or did it return silently?

it returned immediately i could re run the dhclient eth0 command a second time

Then what does 'ifconfig eth0' print?

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:80:C87:3E:EE
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:9 Base address:0xe000 

Can you try with dhcpd please?
dhcpd eth0

get an error message saying command not found

which distro is it?

this distro is Fedora 7

try: yum install dhcpd

It seems to be looking at a web site to get the files to install. However since i can not establish a network connection i can not download the files.

Below is the output from the command you told me to run. I also tried yum install dhcp.

[root@localhost ~]# yum install dhcpd
Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
Could not retrieve mirrorlist http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mir...ra-7&arch=i386 error was
[Errno 4] IOError: <urlopen error (-3, 'Temporary failure in name resolution')>
Error: Cannot open/read repomd.xml file for repository: fedora


[root@localhost ~]# yum install dhcp
Loading "installonlyn" plugin
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
Could not retrieve mirrorlist http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mir...ra-7&arch=i386 error was
[Errno 4] IOError: <urlopen error (-3, 'Temporary failure in name resolution')>
Error: Cannot open/read repomd.xml file for repository: fedora
[root@localhost ~]#

Can you setup a fixed ip the time you install the dhcp client?

I can not set up a static IP address. It seems there maybe an underlying issue with the network card.

If i set up a static ip address the device can be activated successfully however i can not see my router.

I tried disabling the firewall but when I re open the firewall application it is enabled again.

I will look on the net on how to turn the firewall off could you provide some tips and starting points to diagnose why I can not see the router.

At the point in time I believe the IP address, gateway and subnet are correct.