...basically as soon hotplug starts the led on my NIC goes off, it still detects it though and can run ifconfig on eth0 without any problems, it just doesn't do anything (so dhcpcd won't work on it). I have allready tried booting with nohotplug, only to have my NIC powered up but not recognized (ifconfig WON'T work on it).....i await any suggestions. Also everything's just fine when booting from a live cd. I also have installed slackware from the same cds before and i never had problems.....

What does dmesg and/or /var/log/messages say

apparently i'm getting the same problem as another memeber:

b44: eth0: BUG! Timeout waiting for bit 80000000 of register 428 to clear.


I've read the off site link in one of the thread and apparently this was because the windows XP driver for the NIC disables it when unloaded (therefore turning off the link led). I, however, have been using dual boot (XP and slackware) on the notebook for some time, and have made no modifications to the XP drivers so the entire problem literally popped up overnight. And the link led goes off just a few moments after hotplug is ran.