[ale] Can this kill a network adapter?

[Nathan J. Underwood]

I use partimage quite a bit to image computers.  I've never had a 
problem with it (well, haven't had *this* problem with it) in the past, 
but I've just ran into a problem a second time that just seems weird.  I 
have a workstation (fresh install of Windows XP Pro), and I'm creating 
an image on it on a server (Win2k3 SBS).  Generally, after installing 
<insert OS / ver here>, I boot the workstation to a Knoppix disk 
(currently using Knoppix v3.9).  Once Knoppix boots, I open a shell, get 
root, mount a share on my Win2k3 server, fire up partimage, and create 
an image on that samba share.  As mentioned above, that generally 
doesn't cause any problems.

Now, fast forward to a couple of days ago.  Finished a workstation, 
verified that all seemed well, rebooted it and started the imaging 
process.  The partition that it was imaging was only 8GB, so I didn't 
expect it to take too long at all.  I went to grab a cup of coffee and 
see what the latest was at the water cooler, and got back, and it wasn't 
done (normally, it would have been).  Further investigation showed that 
it was hung.  So I killed it, and planned to start it over again.  No 
dice.  The short story is, it was no longer connected to the network.  
ifconfig showed only lo (i.e. no info for eth0).  I then tried to renew 
the IP, no love.  After poking around a bit, I decided to reboot the 
box.  Still, no IP, no trace of eth0.  I stuck another network card in 
the machine, rebooted, imaged, no problems.  Removed the extra nic, 
booted Windows, no nic.  Tried to remove it from device manager (and let 
plug and pray pick it back up), no dice.  The network card (that 
apparently failed) was the built-in card on an Abit NF7 mobo.

Now, fast forward to a couple of minutes ago.  Same scenario.  Installed 
Windows, installed SP2, installed updates, booted Knoppix, mounted [smb] 
share, started imaging process, went for caffeine, returned to a dead 
nic.  This was on an Abit NF8 mobo.  I've not been able to 'resurrect' 
the dead nic on the mobo. 

Anyone had any similar issues with Abit motherboards?