Ubuntu LAN connectivity issue

System: Dell Desktop w/ 2 SATA drives running Ubuntu 9.10 that uses 2 ethernet cards, 1 for internet connectivity and another to interface the machine with a high voltage power supply which supports ssh and EPICS controls. Second Ethernet card is connected to a NetGear WNR3500 router, the VME crate, and the High Voltage device.

I built Ubuntu 9.10 on an external hard drive connected to my laptop and everything seemed fine until I attempted to boot the hard drive on the main machine where it said that files in /root directory did not exist and instead it booted into a limited recovery terminal.

I double checked in Knoppix Live that the files existed, and they did.

I read on a few forums that there are issues with migrating USB drives across machines so I did a clean install of Ubuntu on one of the SATA drives, it booted fine.

I copied over the /usr /etc and /home directories from the USB drive to the SATA installation thinking that it would transfer all of my settings and so forth.

After re-compiling the main Epics program all seemed well until I noticed that the machine was unable to talk to the High Voltage device connected to the router. The High Voltage device has a static IP address 192.168.84.97 but I am unable to ping the address.

I'm thinking that maybe Ubuntu does not come with software packages required for the connection to be made, or that the router is not properly configured now that I have made a fresh install? I can't find a utility for checking the router connectivity, but am able to connect to the router's IP address via Firefox.

How can I set up the network for connectivity at this point? Or are there any other suggestions?

Thanks in advance,
Winston