Home network not working

I am still having a problem getting my home network up and running. I cabled the two computers together, running the cable along the wall over doors, along baseboards, behind furniture, under the kitchen door etc. The 3Com diagnostics program test fails. I have a suspicion that the problem is on the new computer.
On the old computer located in the kitchen I reformatted the hard disk and installed a fresh Windows XP. When I tried to install the drivers for the ethernet card the install program just sat there for 30 minutes not doing anything so I killed it. I suppose that XP should have a compatible driver already but am not sure. I need to poke around in the help documentation to see what to try next.