I was thinking the same thing, actually

I'd just really like to use the NIC, as I have a bunch of stuff to swap. That's not such a problem anymore though. As I'm giving it to my nephew, I wanted to keep it simple and just have one drive letter, but I have since partitioned. I'll just move everything to there and reinstall yet again.

I'm wondering if it might be a BIOS level issue which is making the NIC screw stuff up maybe. He won't need a NIC at his house though. I could also pick up a different brand of NIC, just so he could hook up to a LAN.