I just got a laptop. Gatewar m350wvn. It had Windos XP Pro on it. It had a modem and Broadcom wireless network card. I reinstalled Window with XP Home because of issues I couldn't fix. I believe the PC came from a government agency and had various restrictive Policies set.
After I reinstalled XP Home, I lost recognition of the build-in Ethernet Controller, the Broadcom wireless network adapter, and the on-board modem.
I downloaded a driver for the Ethernet 802.11b and installed. It said it installed OK and said it had "started the device" but nothing was was fixed.
BIOS says it Autodetects the Modem and Ethernet Adapter. "Disable" is the only other BIOS options for those devices.