T5500 nic issues

Hi all,

I currently have a t5500 with a boardcom on board nic.

System specs:

win xp x64 sp2
12gb ram
Broadcom NetXtreme 5761
BIOS is updated to the latest - A02.

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I can successfully bind the pc to our domain but on reboot group policy does not get applied

I get the following error:

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Group Policy Infrastructure failed due to the error listed below.
The specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted.

Note:  Due to the GP Core failure, none of the other Group Policy components processed their policy.  Consequently, status information for the other components is not available.

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I also get W32Time issues in the event log

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The time provider NtpClient was unable to find a domain controller to use as a time source. NtpClient will try again in 15 minutes.

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The time provider NtpClient is configured to acquire time from one or more time sources, however none of the sources are currently accessible.  No attempt to contact a source will be made for 15 minutes. NtpClient has no source of accurate time.

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The time provider NtpClient was unable to find a domain controller to use as a time source. NtpClient will try again in 15 minutes.

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These occur before I get this - Broadcom NetXtreme 57xx Gigabit Controller: Driver initialized successfully. That is the next entry in the event log.

It seems that the NIC is not initilizing before attempts to sync time etc and its messing everything up.

I've updated NIC with Dell drivers, tried Broadcom drivers - still no go.

Windows Firewall off.

Configured this
Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System ->Logon
From the right hand pane double click “Always wait for the network at computer startup and logon”

Did not help.

Using a different NIC plugged into via PCI worked. These broadcoms on the t5500 are giving me issues :(

Any ideas? I'm stumped.