"A network cable is unplugged"; only, not your average issue

[BeratE]

Hi, I searched around for a while and all of the issues involving this statement are not my problem. Basically I have a working, though recently run, cat 5e cable outlet to my room. It works perfectly with the laptop I am typing on at the moment, so the wall socket and the cable itself are fine. When I plug this same cable into my desktop all I get is the "a network cable is unplugged" line. There are no lights on the card in the back, and yes it is a pci card. A few days ago, as I pulled out one of my usb devices, something may have arc'ed and the whole pc shut down. Ever since, the networking card does not function, as described. I grabbed another card from my parents house and threw that in, hoping that the original card had just been fried, but that did not solve the problem. The new card was correctly detected by windows and is supposedly opperating correctly. I am stumped and was hoping somebody could shed some light as to what may have gone wrong, and if so, how I might fix it. There is no trace of anything else being wrong other than neither network card lights up and no attempt is made to get an IP address from my router.
Thanks for any help and sorry for being long winded.

[Fest3er]

It is possible your motherboard fried; failed PCI slots are not unheard of. Have you tried different putting the NIC in different PCI slots?

Check the RJ-45 pins on the card's connector. Ensure they are properly aligned; they've been known to get crossed up now and again.

Pulling a USB device should not ever physically hurt the computer; this is part of the specification.

[BeratE]

Yep, I have moved the card into about four different pci slots and nothing has changed. I would be surprised if the motherboard is fried since every other function works perfectly.
Thanks for the guesses