What's the rest of his network look like? Have diags been run on whatever it is
that his PC connects to? Do the LEDs on his network port light up? What about
the other end of the cable? It could be that his modem/switch/hub is in needs
of a power cycle, or it could be dead. Has the ISP been called?

Cable modem to pc. Thats is.
Cable modem works fine with the laptop connected via cable.
I've logged in to the modem from here just fine and it is handing out ip's.

Cable company remotely powered the modem.
I had my dad do the same before that.

I disagree that being able to ping the loopback address means the
hardware is good.
I really don't agree that the loopback address is tied to the hardware
itself.
Can you dad right click on the network icon and edit the connection,
then set it to automatic and reboot?
This might make it come to life.

I do as well. I dont think it is good. I think something happened.

Right click on Network Connection, Connection Information is not
clickable. Click Edit Connection and it is already automatic.

Sounds like the network card is bad.

I disagree, I have tried 9.04 and had the very same type of failures.
Reverted to 8.10 Ubuntu and worked every time. My experience with
9.04 with networking on wire connection was very intermittant.
I could have spent a lot of time trouble shooting I suppose but again it
takes time and I just chose to revert back. I am now looking at installing
9.10, but may just reload XP and make a dual boot system with what ever
I choose for my next Linux adventure.

I called a friend to see about swapping the HD that had xp on it.
Same problem.

Im going to RMA the system.

In 9.04 what usually worked for me was the following sequence (aside from
power-down followed by power-up of my FiOS router before these steps):
sudo /etc/init.d/NetworkManager stop
sudo /etc/init.d/networking stop
sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
sudo /etc/init.d/NetworkManager restart

If that does not work, then try deleting the file:
/var/lib/dhcp3/dhclient-da93150a-*-eth0.lease
and then retry the above steps.

Note: In Ubuntu 9.10 only the networking steps work and the NetworkManager step
does not in the above sequence because it has been changed to an upstart job
(which I have yet to figure out). However, by using the networking steps
coupled with the sudo ifup eth0 - that appeared to work for me in Ubuntu 9.10
(maybe by deleting the lease file as mentioned above).