Hardwiring the modum to the Computer?

Your DSL speed is WAY slower than your wireless connection between the desktop and router most likely. The direct wired connection won't gain you any internet speed at all. As already mentioned that USB port on the router is almost certainly to share a printer or external hard drive, and nothing more.

Silly, but did you power down and back up?

Did you look to see if there are any lights where the cable plugs into the computer?

If you just got it back from the shop after having W7 put back on I would suspect the shop didn't get all the drivers reinstalled. But a new ethernet card would be super cheap to buy.

And no, hooking up the modem through the USB will not "hardwire" it to the computer.

If you're on the fringe of a 3 meg DSL line you likely won't see any speed increase if you use ethernet cable to connect the modem to the computer. A good wireless router should give you throughput speeds way in excess of your 3 meg line speed. That's assuming that you aren't blocking good signal from the router to the computer.

As far as security, a ethernet cable will be more secure than Wifi of course, but with a good WPA2 password, and WPS disabled you're pretty secure. Six of one, half dozen of the other.

Your card may be down or you may just be missing the driver.

Thanks for the quick replies. Forgot to mention that i just got the puter back from the shop to the tune of 175 bucks. Just gdot it back on win7 and working again after the win 10 mess.

I was told that ethernet was more secure and maybe faster by a little bit. Speed is my killer in that i am on the fringe of a 3 meg DSL which is run out here in the country thru copper wire/cable.

Gonna give the shop a call and go from there.

And for most people, there is no particular advantage to having it hardwired versus wireless anyway.

But if you are determined to do this, a replacement ethernet card probably can be had for about $20 at any computer store.

There is a 99% probability the USB port on the router is for a printer or external hard drive and there is almost no likelihood that it provides a network connection.

You didn't specify which cable network bridge (Not a MoDem because it doesn't change data to sound, or sound to data) you have. Is it a bridge/router/Wireless Access Point combination? We don't know what the USB port does on it.

No. If you are hard wiring your computer to the modem, you need to use an Eathernet cable. It looks like a telephone jack, but is bigger.

It's possible your Eathernet card in your computer has died.

Probably not.

Have you checked to see if the ethernet port has been deactivated?

You most likely need a new ethernet port on the computer. That should not be hard or expensive. Call the Geek Squad.