Realtek 8139 vanished!!!

[Scribbler]

This is so frustrating!

One day i tried to connect to another PC to transfer files and nothing happened. Naturally i went straight to Device Manager to check on the NICs status and it wasn't there! No reason to panic i thought...

Turned off PC. reseated the card... nothing
Transfered card to another PCI slot... nothing
Replaced the card with another one... XP didn't even see it
Hmmm...

'Show Hidden Devices' in Device Manager showed me the Realtek packet scheduler miniport but no NIC
On startup BIOS recognises Network Adapter on IRQ 11
In System Info>Components>Problem Devices it says 'device is disabled'. How do I enable it if it doesn't appear in Device Manager????!

Unfortunately as i only network occasionally i can't nail down what caused it as i don't know exactly when it stopped working. It could be around the time I installed SP2 though
Sledge-Hammer time!

[RoSpider]

I suggest you uninstall Service Pack 2 since it still have many bugs although it is a final release.

Good Luck

[Scribbler]

Tried it. No joy
I think it could be a problem with the actual PCI slots or the motherboard or drivers.
I'm sure a reformat / reinstall will sort it out but that's a last resort.
Does anyone have a clue???