Why can't connect to the internet? i have a compaq presario v6000.?

i can't connect to the internet throught the cable in my appartment. i worked fine until last week. while i was using my laptop in my appartment i lost connection and realized i left the wireless switch on and that i was picking up someone elses wireless signal. i turned off the wireless switch and went to my network and sharing center but i couldn't connect through the internet cable, the only thing there was the name of the wireless network that i had inadvertently been connected to. i saw an option that said disconnect in the network and sharing center and click on it. the computer still couldn't find a connection throught the cable. i looked at the drivers and the cable driver was unavailbile. i tried to update it through troubleshooting, but it kept coming up with an error message saying that it couldn't update two items. i did this three time before i gave up. how do i update the drivers and get connectivity back? could there be a different problem that i'm not aware of?