Ubuntu devices missing or not working
 

Hi,
I'm (very) new to Ubuntu, i installed the Wubi project to install Ubuntu on my laptop (Dell Latitude D600) without having to re-partition my drive. I thought it'd be best to update as much as possible, so i updated to Gutsy Gibbon (taking nearly all day to do so), before updating everything worked fine, all devices were there and the internet connection through my router (wired) worked fine. Now after the update the network card shows up with an icon in the top bar as having no connection, although the setting shave not changed, the DVD-drive is not being detected it seems, and if i try to to look at the system devices the window starts to load, but then exits for no reason, also when I start up i get an error message about some 'HAL' thingy. thankfully i can still boot into windows to send you this message (although i use XP grudgingly) so i might have a hope of sorting this out, but i haven't a clue what to do to fix this as the OS is alien to me at the moment. does anyone know how to fix this? is it lots of separate problems or one big inter-linked one?
Thank you in advance for your help =]
Rob