I hope somebody can help me with this -

background:
we had a power cut in the office a few days ago, when the power came back up - my network did not. As it turned out it was just a router that didn't power up. Now that's been sorted and I know my network segment is fine (windows box is online).

problem:
my debian nic did not come back up. ifconfig returns every RX packet as an error i.e. no received packets but the TX has no errors.
I guessed that the power cut blew out my nic so I replaced it but the problem remains, then I thought I might have developed an IRQ conflict (somehow) but I've checked and it looks fine - has anybody else got any ideas ?
cheers