Boot Mepis- internet no problem- log out and boot Win2k- network and internet are unworkable. Get message that network cable is unplugged, and of course the cable and all hardward are fine. I then boot to Ubuntu live cd and shut down and all is back to normal upon rebooting to Win.

My guess- Mepis changes something that it doesn't change back at close- or takes something out at close that Win needs.

I have no idea.

never seen this before, on many (4 or 5) mepis-and-windows dual boots. mepis really shouldn't touch the windows part of the disk, unless you tell it to do so, and even then you're prob in "my docs" and not somewhere containing the networking info. and I don't think that the mepis software is affecting the computer's hardware...

can you reproduce this error a lot, or just the one time?

It happens everytime I go from Mepis to Win. I think it must change a hardware setting on the network. Here is a better picture than I previously posted. I also need to post this on the Mephis lovers board.
After booting and closing Mephis from either the disk install or the live cd, this is the problem.
Upon booting win I get the message local area network unplugged. I then cannot get to the router or modem. If I then close win and boot to the live Knoppix Cd and then close Knoppix and go back to win, everything is back to normal. I have tried some suggestion about running cmd and config ip address in win but they didn't seem to work and perhaps I wasn't doing it all correctly.
This leads me to believe that Mepis changes some setting on the broadcom network module on my motherboard and doesn't change it back. It is probably just something with this board. It is an Asus p4pe I think, but I am away from home and don't have the manuel. I have also run Ubuntu and PClinux with no problem of this nature.
Oddly enough though it seems that every distro that I try is very good but has one annoying thing that is hard to fix or work with. I will just keep juggling systems and then try the latest Knoppix when it becomes available.

Thanks!

Whats going on is that mepis is not shutting down your network interface, what you need to do is go into the kde control center, goto System Administration>Login Manager>Shutdown in there there is a box called halt, change that's value from /sbin/halt to /sbin/halt -i

Thank you for the input. It sounded like a great idea to me. However adding the -i didn't do it. Thanks again!

Do you have the same issue after a cold boot? In that case, instead of doing a warm reboot you could just shutdown the PC and boot again. Another option would be to check if there's some driver setting in windows for the nic, that allows you to reset it before you boot or sth.