I played around with the NIC drivers. Force the NIC drivers. I had tried so many things and when it came down to it. It was the NIC. Try the driver for W2K that has a description as: Intel(R) 82559 Fast Ethernet That seemed to work for me. I had to force it. Version number is: 8.0.17.0. Post when you are done...curious to see if my fix works...Dell was no help in my quest for this solution!!!