Onboard nic suddenly dies?

Hi I recently set up a pc for a friend: Barton 2600+ GA-7N400L 256mb OCZ Premiere series pc3200 Asus 9600XT SB Audigy maxtor diamondmax 9 80gb Enermax 350w dual fan. He uses cable internet and the onboard nic. We were using the net all last night and he was using it this morning. I get a call a few hrs ago and he says that the net isn't working anymore. Upon checking in the nic properties it says device is working properly and there are no irq conflicts. Now on his cable modem it has status leds for power cable and pc, and the pc light is off indicating that somehow it isn't communicating with the pc. I rechecked all the wiring and it's good, also tried uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers for the nic. Nothing is working. The pc is only 12 hours old and was running prime95 succesfully the whole time. Pc is not overclocked and the fsb is 166 if anyone cares. Could the nic just have died out? but if it did wouldn't device manager tell me that the device isn't working? can someone shed thier opinion on this?.

could of died , do you got a nic card to try that. i use a nic card all the time never use onboard

I can pull the nic out of my pc and try it in his. I'll post back results.

cool ill look back to see how it turns out