help with ubuntu 9.04 in dell studio 14

[J]

So to be sure, you WIRED network does not work, but your WIRELESS
network does? I just want to be clear on that, because those are two
completely different devices and different drivers.

In any case, the wired card is a BCM57780 based GbE card and should
use the tg3 driver.  However, 9.04 is old enough that the tg3 version
in what you just installed may not have support for that chipset.
What I've been able to find around the internet seems to indicate that
support for those cards came some time in 2009, but, for example, in
BSD it didn't appear until the end of 09.

So, next step.  open a terminal and type:

tail -f /var/log/messages

then open another terminal and type this:

rmmod tg3

and see what messages appear in the /var/log/messages terminal.

Then type this in the open terminal:

sudo modprobe tg3

and see if any error messages appear in the /var/log/messages terminal

Attach (or just paste) the kernel messages from those two commands in
your reply.

Also, it appears that you're not necessarily alone...  here's a bug in
Debian that sounds similar:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=46825

However, from what I've been able to find quickly on Launchpad, it
seems that card is supported in Ubuntu 10.04.

Is there any reason you can't download and burn a CD of 10.04, since
what you're trying to install with is over a year old at this point
and will be dead by October?

Cheers,

jeff