I got a call about a workstation with a dead nic. In device manager it shows up with an exclamation mark. Vista 64 bit box. I tried to install the drivers from the Intel CD which did not help. I tried the drivers from the Intel web site which did not help. An Intel salesman calls me while I am doing this. I fuss that I am working on a DG33. He says what is that. A salesman that does not know his products. That motherboard has not been deprecated that long ago. In any event he got me a support engineer saving me partner id and all that stuff. We tried the driver again. Updated the bios. Still no joy. I shut down the workstation. Unplugged the power and the nic cable. Pressed the power button to drain the energy from the motherboard. Power up and in the bios we disabled the nic and booted into Vista. Back down and then we got back to the bios and turned the nic back on. Vista found the nic and all was good. The engineer said you have to unplug everything and remove the cmos battery for a half hour that motherboard discharge trick to work. I suppose some capacitors can hang on to some energy. I did not feel like arguing on that point. At least a half dozen times that power and nic cable unplug and power button press has successfully reset a stuck nic. First time I have had to disable in the bios but it sounds like a good trick to remember.