Try disabling the orignal card, and I know this sounds silly, but run thru the internet connection wizard and see if that solves the problem.

I guess by disable you mean uninstall? I'll try that tonight.

Otherwise, last night I tried the first PCI slot.  I saw someplace that the computer assumes the NIC card is in the first slot.  Same problem.

The new card is noticed, The Berkley (RealTEK RTL8139 family PCI Fast ethernet) is identified then a window pops up and say "NT Authority Ststem  ...\system32\servives unexpected status code - 2147483641" and the system shuts down after 60 seconds.

I ran MSINFO32.exe and under system summary / network I get "Can't collect information, ensure network card working..".

I did go looking for the chipset driver, I see this a lot as a suggestion when I comb through this forum.  I see a bunch of Intel 82something divers.  Although they are not first on the list of drivers and I can't see a way to re-order the drivers.

No, Disable means DISABLE, if you uninstall it , it will just reinstall when you reboot.

I tried the disable - network wizard a couple times.  What basically happens is, as the wizard starts up, it hangs for awhile, hard drive working away and then pauses and closes all the windows, gronks the floppy drive and gets back to the desk top.

I tried removing the dial modem and tried all the combinations of re-install, diable, etc.  It appeared (maybe I am just being hopeful) to get a little further but still no good.  During an attempt to set up the DSL software I think I saw the ethernet light blink a couple times.

I tried a different DSL modem.  I have two, one fresh from the box.  No luck.

I tried the second DSL modem under USB connection, thinking I could do the upgrade, patch, update thing.  But this would not instal either.  The computer sees it when it is attached but can not fully install it.  It just sits there in the device manger as yellow.  Even tell it to look at the CD.

I noticed that on MSinfo32 that the NIC is IRQ7 and doesn't share this IRQ with anything.  If I check the adapter after a fresh boot it just shows up with a blanck screen (a table with headers and no information).  If I play around a little, like launch the network wizard or something then MSinfo32 says can't collect information.

Any other suggestions?

It doesn't make sense that if you disable the other NIC that it tries to reinstall, thats not suppossed to happen.  I'll need to sleep on this one.

Thanks for your time so far.

The NIC is only re-installing when I ask it to.  Maybe I typed too fast last note.  I tried your idea of disable the NIC then launch the network wizard.  When I do the wizard thinks for awhile, scanning the system then shuts down giving me just the Win desk top with all windows closed.  A gronk of the floppy drive thrown in for good measure.

I have tried this with all the combinations of the Siemens card and the RealTek card in several slots.  Uninstalled, installed, rebooted in and out, enabled, disabled, wizard, ... all pretty much the same.

This morning, Siemens card in and all green lights, I pinged an address.  Not having one in my head, I was trying to ping the Verizon server.  No connection to the internet so it didn't go to far.  But the activity light flashes on the modem.  I am going to attach my wireless router and ping it, since I know the address.

More information, good and not so much.

I was playing around with the computer more last night.  I hooked up my wireless router and ping'd it and I got a response.  Emboldened, I tried a few more things.  Like the network wizard, since the ethernet card is talking to the outside world.  After the network wizard did its typical hang-up and close, I tried to ping again and no response.  So a reboot got me back to being able to ping.

I then called verizonDSL for a talk through and ideas.  The software would still not load but we talked through a manual configuration.  It took a couple reboots and several runs at it.  After about 45 seconds the window would freeze for about 10 seconds and close the window.  SO typing fast I managed to get through the set up. 

Now I can load a simple web page, maybe a second before explorer shuts down.  Not enough to do any updates or the like.  So I am 'talking' with the outside world, it is just not at all stable.

 

It looks like success!

I searched all the help boards I could find.  Did some winsock fix and isp fix and the like.  Finally after realising ping's were fine to both addresses and names.  I finally just did away with IE and loaded up FireFox.  Now surfing fine.

I guess the IE version on the disk was faulty?  Maybe I can patch it later and that will help.