Huge problems with Broadcom 440x integrated NIC

The Broadcom 440x integrated NIC in my 600m is giving me huge problems.

When my 600m arrived, everything worked fine. However, after about 2 hours of operation, I restarted the computer, and when XP started up completely, an add/remove hardware icon appeared in the system tray claiming a new network card had been found. Immediately upon seeing this, I noticed that Local Area Connection in the Network connections window had dissapeared, and that the integrated 440x network card had been replaced with a yellow question mark in the device manager. I tried re-installing the correct drivers supplied by dell only to get a "device could not start code 10" error in the device manager.

I re-formatted the computer, completely re-installed windows XP and all drivers, only to have the same thing happen again.

Frustrated, I tried two linux-live distributions, both of which either didn't recognize the NIC, or locked upon detecting that a network interface was present.

I then tried Broadcom's DOS-based diagnostic utility for the BCM4401 from their website here: http://www.broadcom.com/drivers/downloaddrivers.php

The test returned a "FAILED" result when it tested the EEPROM.

I then turned to the included Dell Diagnostic utility partition. The utility strangely didn't list the network interface as present, which it does on my Inspiron 8500 which carries the same ethernet card.

Is the NIC fried? Should I send dell the 600m back and ask for a replacement? If so, how?