OK, I know you are frustrated, but let's make sure all the pieces are in place.
PC with driver installed
USB cable
Dongle flashed with pixelnet firmware
Strait through Ethernet cable
Passive or Active 16 port hub with PC power supply attached and all 4 power connectors have plugs in them from the power supply.
Strait through Ethernet cable - stranded wire - not solid wire
SSC
Smart string pixels, squares, rectangles, flex strips, or rigid strips ordered through the wiki - not ordered from somewhere else!
First, flash the ssc with the test firmware.
Connect pc power supply, hub, ssc, and nodes. With the program jumper removed, nodes should cycle through red, green, blue, and white (order may vary depending on the pixel type). If this is not happening, check node wiring to make sure pixels are connected properly. If the first node lights a very dim blue color, the ground and data may be backwards...
If you have a multimeter, make sure you have something close to 12 volts on both the input and output side of the SSC when the LEDs are off. When the LEDs are on and you are using a long cat 5 cable, you may see some voltage drop...
If all that works, flash the SSC with the appropriate SSC firmware. Versions 1 & 2 require different firmware!!!
Connect everything and use the address utility to attempt to set the start address.
After exiting the address utility, use the color picker utility to see if the pixels will respond to control data. The advantage of using the color picker is that it transmits data across the whole universe - if the address did not take or are wrong, the pixels will still respond to the color picker.
If the color picker works, you can move to other programs for testing.