[ale] Can this kill a network adapter?

[Calvin Harrigan]

Nathan J. Underwood wrote:

>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?
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>  
>
I'm not sure if it's related, but the nics on those boards (nforce 
chipsets) are not very reliable.  I've had the nics go out on a couple  
boards.  The link lights all seem to work normally, the drivers load, 
but no data.  I ended up just installing a pci nic, all was well again. 
One board was MSI one was Asus.  If you do find out how to get them 
working again, please let me/the list know.

Calvin Harrigan