Can's Apply/save Network Settings

[joopa]

Hi,
I have an iMac G4/700 (Flat screen) with OSX 10.2.8. I am a somewhat novice on Mac but pretty good at PC and network issues.

The other day my Internet stopped working. I tried to remove DNS and host settings in the Network System settings, but it did not save my changes. I then renamed the file from terminal and now my settings are blank. And I don't get an address from DHCP or anything.

It defaults to PPP on Modem and when I try to change the order, it still does not save.

Needless to say I tried different cables to the router and also tried my PC on the same cable which is working fine.

Could I have fried my network card? Can I replace it? Do I need to reinstall the Operating system (the reason why I hate Windows)?

Obviously I am now typing from my work PC as I have no internet.

Thanks,
Frank

 

[joopa]

OK, so as I was trying to solve this problem I all of a sudden got the ?-mark envelope and my computer would not boot up. It did not see the drive when running the disk utility. I replaced the hard drive and reinstalled OS X and it is working.
Now I am just waiting for my USB drive to see if I can recover information from the lost hard drive. I had a recent backup though.
\Thanks