Windows 2000 not reaching the Net

I've just reloaded a machine that has a Pentium 3, 933mhz with 128 mb's of SDRam. When I reloaded it the first time with Windows XP Pro the NIC recognized the internet and I could surf with it, but I decided I wanted to use Windows 2000 instead. When I loaded Windows 2000 onto it, I checked the driver status and it said that the drivers were working correctly. So then I proceeded to login into the central fileserver on my home network and that worked fine so I'm confident that the drivers have been loaded correctly. But when I try to open up Internet Explorer and go to update everything on the computer, it won't recognize the internet. It acts as though it knows IP's and is trying to find the site but the site never loads. Any clues as to why this would happen?

Other information about this home LAN is that I'm running a Mandrake 9.1 Linux fileserver that also serves as a local DNS and print server. All client computers are either Win 2000/XP and are set to use the DNS server as they're primary DNS server. All other computers except the aforementioned Windows 2000 computer have internet access. All ip's in the clients are set manually as well. Any ideas, suggestions or otherwise relevant material is greatly appreciated.

Thanks, rufius

did you right click the internet explorer icon, go to properties, then connections, set up the connection manually select the option that best applies to you and try it again.

Been there, done that.

got any firewalls, i assume if you have a router you have checked it all out.

Have you tried letting windows pick up an ip address from your router?