Oh yeah... I have 2 onboard ethernet cards on my mobo. I was thinking this was a problem so in the BIOS I disabled the one not in use.
I ran ifconfig and it didnt recognize the one I disabled so I was thinking it was good to go. So I ran drakconnect and there it didnt show the card so still good to go. Then after running that and restarting the network it showed eth0 = OK and eth1 = Failed. Why? I disabled it, I dont even want it to show.

That seems to indicate that packets are not reaching the gateway box (xp).

There are a cpl things to check out.

As root, when you type
route
in a terminal, does it list the ip address/name of the xp box? Sometimes that will say something like mshome rather than an IP address. If that is there, then maybe it is a firewall issue.

type
iptables -L
and see if there are any rules in there not allowing packets out.

It should absolutely work if the default route is set and your linux box is also on the same network as the xp box (192.168.0.?)

Ping the xp box by ip

ping -c3 192.168.0.1

(The -c3 is just the number of times to ping. UNIX ping will ping forever and ever until you kill the process off with <cntrl-c> )

Another silly thing to check would be whether the light is on the switch. Maybe it isn't plugged in all the way.

Also, type (as root)
ifconfig
on the linux box and make sure it does indeed have an ip address

You shud see eth0 and lo listed.
lo will say 127.0.0.1
eth0 shud have an ip address on the same network as that xp box.

Hey...
I got it up and running. I really appreciate your time and help. Someone I had on my AIM buddy list that I knew knows linux walked me through it. It really was in a different direction than what you were referring to.
I had to edit the ifcfg-eth0, the resolv.conf and punch in a few commands and BAM, I was online.
Once again, thanks tons and I will remember to pass the info you passed to me onto the next person.