Strange Ethernet Card Behaviour

Hello All,

I am a newbie to this newsgroup, so apologies if I post badly.

I am attempting to set up a network between my XP laptop and
my SuSE 7.2 linux box. I am using a cheap Belkin network pack,
with switch, cables and ethernet cards.

I managed to get the card set up, using the ne2k-pci module for
the ethernet card, and the network started working, could ping the XP
laptop, and had samba running.

After I powered down my PC, and went to bed... happy in a mission
partly fulfilled.

On returning the next day, I have found that the PC can't load the module,
giving device does not exist messages. No settings were changed in between
the card working, and it not working.

I tried re-installing the module in the way that I had originally, through
the network
configuration bit of SuSE, and when it tries to save the configuration I
just get
"Device eth0 is not running."

I have read somewhere that this problem could be to do with the ethernet
card
not being automatically powered on by the system when it starts, but turning
off
the Plug and Play OS option of my bios makes no difference.
Is there any way in which I can check to see if the card is actually
enabled?

Any other ideas about what could be wrong?

Many thanks,

Daniel Tallentire