I'm posting this as a new thread because it contains information of its
own merit.

Following up on the responses to the last thread, I once again hit a
stone wall; no joy. And so I simply Googled the problem I was having.

Ahhh..... well, obviously, I wasn't the only one with the problem,
which was with the NIC listed in 'lspci': Realtek Semiconductor Co.
Ltd. RTB8111/8168B PCI Express Ethernet controller (rev. ff). 'lsmod'
showed the module 'R8169', which is why it all showed in 'ifconfig'. I
had no idea that there was a problem with this, because it had worked
great under <gag> M$ Vista.

It turned out that, in dual boot scenarios, unless Wake on LAN was
enabled in Vista, Vista would disable the NIC on shutdown... and the
module 'R8169' had no clue as to how to enable it again! Was I dual
booting? Well... not intentionally, but I had shut down Vista for the
last time before wiping it from the disk, so I guess that qualified.

The first fix was to reboot to Vista and enable Wake on LAN, which would
make Vista leave the NIC enabled on shutdown; which I couldn't do, of
course. The next fix was to get another module and install it, that is,
download another module, which I couldn't do either. No problem, I
could download it on my box and ftp it over, which I couldn't do either!
Cope it to a floppy (3.5")? Nope, HP Pavilions have no floppy drives,
just DVD burners.

Which meant I would have to burn this new module to a CD and sneaker-net
it over to the HP... argh... which I did, after making a trip to town
to get more CDs... argh!... With new module in hand, I simply removed
the old one and installed the new one, specified the new module for the
Realtek in the (now deprecated but still functional)
'/etc/modprobe.conf' file: "alias eth0 r8168.ko". Removing the old
module and inserting the new one didn't work; 'ifconfig eth0 up' ran
into trouble with flags. So I did a cold reboot.

That fixed it.

'lspci' revealed a subtle change: The NIC was listed the same, except
now as "rev 2" instead of "ff".

Moral of the story? Well, this time M$ Vistabloat wasn't at fault, I
think. The module 'r8169' couldn't enable a disabled NIC. That said, a
new module specific to that particular NIC was already available for me
to snag and install. Don't know how long it took to remediate the
problematic module, but one thing is certain:

It would have taken M$ even longer to admit that there was a problem,
after which they would charge $BUX for a "Service (bug fix) Pack". We
trade the willingness and desire to learn what we need to know for
timely service, and they trade $BUX for ZZzzzz.... service.

Moral of the story, part 2? <$1kUS HP systems (includes LCD monitor)
can be used for new gear on the cheap with real operating systems! Need
a new system? Office Depot and the like have reasonable deals, and they
run Slackware just fine!

Thanks all,

Longfellow