eth0 device down

[Eberhard Roloff]

Bas Roufs wrote:
>> Imho some modern laptops have two version of BIOS, one for Win XP
>> one for Vista. Try a flash the laptop with the BIOS for Win XP (if exist),
>> maybe this help you.
> 
> The laptop I am talking about is a 'Medion 5400', produced in 2002.

So simply forget about XP/Vista Bios considerations

>But I did not
> yet find any way to change the BIOS in such a way that it takes the
> new OS (Kubuntu 8.10) into account. 

There is none. So you do not need to look for it.

Because of some advise at another
>I changed the OS
> indication in the BIOS back to 'Windows XP'. 

This is ok. With "DOS" you might get a different mode of harddisk 
recognition and/or memory handling, so "XP" is the correct setting.

> But the active connection still is not
> available.

This is quite unusual, especially for such an old machine. Generally 
your network should simply work out of the box. As it obviously does 
not, we better begin with more basic things:


1. Before doing anything else, look within your Bios, likely in 
"peripherals" (or similar) setup, whether you can (de)activate your 
network card. If so, you need to have it enabled. ;-)).
If you do not find it, be sure to look at EVERY setting in ANY Edge of 
the Bios to be sure, that you did not miss it.

2. After enabling the Network Card (possibly), please run "sudo lspci"
from a command-line.
You should get something similar to this from the desktop, I am writing 
this on:
[...]
02:05.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8001 
Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 13).
[...]

With your result, we will be able to look up whether your Network 
controller might possibly be (in)compatible with Linux.
> 
>> Are you sure that the NIC is enabled in BIOS ?

See before
> 
> Can you briefly explain what 'NIC' means in this context and how I can
> find it in the BIOS menu?

Look it up! "Internal Ethernet Card" might be good to search for, maybe 
not exactly, but very similar.

Kind regards
Eberhard