I accidentally disabledhe IRQ used for my NIC by hitting ctrl+alt+Fn2 before pc was completely booted. Oops. How do I make IRQ #5 usable again, and also make sure my NIC gets reassigned? I tried to reactivate the NIC so that when I rebooted it might be automatically detected and assigned, which seemed to work. New hardware was found, and I was asked by kudzu to either 1. configure NIC, 2. Ignore the device or 3. Do nothing. I chose configure and was asked IP address. Typed ifconfig and only receive loopback address. How do I get config info?

I've only been doing work with Linux for a little while but I would think that being connected to any network would cause ifconfig to come up with an ip address. Only seeing a loopback address (should be 127.0.0.1) says that your network adapter is enabled but you have no connection. A network will allocate you a logical address (often something like: 192.168.2.2) and resolve that to the physical (mac address) of your adapter. I'd say check your connected to something and if not resolve that. your typical network troubleshoot should be:

>ping: 127.0.0.1 this is the universal loopback and will verify your adapter is functioning.

>ping your default gateway (router or the next piece of hardware upstream of you) in my case this is 192.168.2.1

>ping something external eg www.google.com

the point at which this fails is where your problem lies.

As I said it appears you are not connected to anything, sorry if this doesn't help but with my limited knowledge of linux and the info available this is the best advice I can give. In short check your connectivity.