I tried the Wake on Lan setup. The wakeup-0n-Lan after poweroff was already enabled. Tried to diasable and shutdown, wait 10 seconds, startup. Still the same problem. Changed it back to "Enable". But the same error.

I also tried BIOS setup, which had ROM on lan card enabled. Tried disabling this. Reboot and the same error.

Though it may not have anything to do with the network card issue, let me make my setup clear. I have comcast HS internet and I am connecting it to a netgear router. The router then connects my PC. I even tried connecting directly to the cable-modem and it still doesn't work. Am I missing anything?

No, you're not. Try some LiveCD, Slax for example.

Slax works with this card. But I can't get my Slackware 2.6.17.13 to work with it yet. I have the same problem, eth0 does not exist when you do ifconfig -a but you can see it in lspci, etc.

This is a known problem with winbloze putting the NIC to sleep. It was reported in dual boot situations. There is some patch in higher level kernel to wake up the NIC.

Sorry for taking so long to reply.

The slax works and finds eth0, with the forcedeth driver. The size was a little different. It had the kernel 2.6.27 or something, which is higher than the one that i have 2.6.18. I also compiled lshw on my box. Even that shows the ethernet device. But card doesn't work.

Is it the kernel?

It seems to be. I just installed Slackware's 2.6.27.7 kernel on a Slackware 11.0 system and the RTL8201 I have is now recognized. From what I could tell from all the web searches I did, the drivers supplied by the manufacturer are buggy. The later kernel seems to work better.

But I am still getting mostly terrible download performance and I don't know why.

I don't know how much of this is true. But it seems to prove why slax is successful in finding eth0.
http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-L.../msg00633.html

It says "..I have installed 2.6.18-6 and seems it's forcedeth module doesn't support this chipset...I have downloaded kernel sources starting from 2.6.21 up to 2.6.25 and found that this chipset is supported in 2.6.23 and above.."

Does anybody know of forcedeth for kernel 2.6.18 or worked out any solution for mcp73 on 2.6.18?

Do you have a link to this bug?

Check the realtek site. I can't remember exactly where I found it, sorry. I am running 12.2 with a newer kernel and it works fine.

Okay, it is a distro problem i do believe. It works on ubuntu but doesn't work on CentOS 5.3 and/or Fedora Based O/S. I do believe it only has the problem with CentOS. I am trying to fix this problem and I am having trouble and there isn't any good info on how to fix it.

I've read all the above and looks to me it's a driver problem.

I think danny_skj gave the clue to fix this. get the ubuntu driver and install it. it works on his sys.

Worth a try

billairds