Well I've read this entire tale of woes and I'm just gonna add my own 2 cents. I'm
having the same issue--and some others--all network related.
In my case I have 4 OS's (2-2K SP4 & 2-XP SP2) on different partiton of the same
computer. This issue manifests on 1 of my XP partitions and to a lesser degree on
one of my 2K partitions. The fact that the network/DSL works flawlessly on my oldest
2K partition tells me that this is NOT a hardware/cable issue. It's, IMHO entirely
a registry/driver issue--which I've yet to decipher.
What's so completly annoying about it is that I know damn well the soltion has to
be totally trivial!