I had the strangest thing happen to me and I need everyone's help. I am running slackware 10.2 with kernel 2.6.16.9 and gnome 2.14. I built the kernel to include the forcedeth drivers for my NVIDIA board and everything was fine. At boot up, the kernel always loaded the driver and showed the mac address, and the ip address. We had some storms here and our light went away while the machine was on. Since then I haven't been able to get an ip address. At startup, the mac address is shown but no ip address is acquired.

I even reinstalled everything thinking it might have been a data corruption but to no avail. Even after the restore I can't get an ip address; I'm seriously puzzled and need help. Thanks.

try this command on konsole and post the output here

# dmesg | grep eth

# /sbin/ifconfig

we wait for further follow up

Need futher information.
Have you looked at the computers logs for errors?
Where does this computer get its IP address, from your ISP or a router? What kind of broadband service are you using. Does the modem appear functional, link lights or computer ethernet adapter, router and modem?
If from the ISP have you verifed that it is operational?
If from a router have you verified it is working buy looking at the logs.
Have you reapplied power to the modem and router if applicable?

Hindsight is 20/20 but lightning storms including brown outs do damage electronic circuits.

BTW help - network is not a very descriptive title. Most people starting threads need help.

when I do dmesg | grep eth I get the following:
forcedeth.c: Reverse Engineered nForce ethernet driver. Version 0.49
eth0: forcedeth.c: subsystem: 01509:6006 bound to 0000:00:14.0
eth0: no IPv6 routers present

after typing ifconfig, I the get following:
lo Link encap: Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:784 (784.0 b) TX bytes:784 (784.0b)

When I do ifconfig eth0 up and then ifconfig eth0 up, I also get:
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:40:CA:AD:80:54
inet6 addr: fe80::240:caff:fead:8054/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:10 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions: 0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:2600 (2.5 KB) TX bytes:0 (0.0b)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x2000

I don't get any error messages or anything of that nature; when it tries to assign an ip address it just takes a while. Now that same machine is connected to my router (I have roadrunner service) and when booted up to Windows XP, I can access the network and internet but just not through linux. I also have 2 other linux machines that work fine on the network. I've also unplugged my router and gone directly to the modem of the affected machine to no avail. I don't understand why the same procedure that I used in the past to set up my machine would work and then after the incident with the blackout, linux won't assign me an ip address or can't find for some reason. The mac address does exist and is up, but linux won't recognize the ip address.

I'm puzzled.

Have you verified the ethernet adapter link lights are illuminated on the PC as well as the port on the router?

Try assigning a static IP address i.e.
ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.50 up (Change IP address to match your local net)

Can you ping the router or any of the other PCs? Do the link lights flash on the router and PC?

ok looks good

proceed this

change x to the number of ur network range can be found following your router ip

then see what msg u get , if u dont get anything then proceed /sbin/ifconfig eth0

I want to thank everybody for your help. After much wondering around with ip addresses and stuff, I decided to work backwards and installed the kernel 2.6.13. I loaded the driver from Nvidia's website and the network started working. Since I really wanted gnome 2.14, I decided to remove the other kernel completely and reinstall it. I removed the driver since it ain't compatible with the new kernel and when I booted the machine it worked. There is one change that took place and I really don't know how it happened. The base address of eth0 changed. It might have been a conflict or so, but after some messing around with it, it finally worked. Again, thanks for your help and if somebody has any comments (since I'm still not 100% sure how it got fixed), please post them. ThanX