strange results involving functionality of ethernet and wireless

[cp0ff]

About a week ago, my ethernet card stopped working, but i
figured out that it still worked in Windoze98 and in Morphix.
a few days later, my wireless pcmcia card stopped working too, but
again, it works in windoze98 and in Morphix.
I have re-installed mandrake 10.1 twice with the original cds I had,
then finally with a newly downloaded DVD, and there is no change in
this behavior. I have tried all the configuration methods I know of
and still no go, however Morphix has them working totally effortlessly,
just like it used to be in Mdk 10.1.

some additional info...
the machine in question in a IBM thinkpad T22 that I use both at home,
off a network and at work on the net, I am somewhat of a n00b, but use Linux as my primary OS 99.5% of the time.
here at work, I am setting up an apache server, an FTP server and an
email server on a seperate machine(s) but have installed various programs to my laptop temporarily, to simply investigate them and read the docs. I have no-doubt done some stupid, dangerous stuff from a security standpoint on this machine like running gui as root, etc.
I figured that a reformat would handle whatever crap I could get myself into, but here is the thing- to protect myself from data loss, I have the large
majority of my disk partitioned as /mnt/uzr where I keep everything I do not
want lost- music, pictures, my personal files etc, no programs or anything
just files, this way when I reinstall, I leave this partition alone and mount it again in the new installation... works beautifully.
I am wondering however if my issues could be stemming from something hiding on this partition. I have looked through every single folder twice
and there is nothing out of the ordinary of unrecognizable.
I have run rkhunter and another root-kit checker without results.
I know little about security issues but obviously need to learn.

can someone give me some advice, suggestions, ideas, anything!?
this is very perplexing

thanks!
C.Poff

[sarumont]

When my eepro100 went to the NIC graveyard, it's MAC was reset to FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF. I'd think that the other events are unrelated. The MAC *can* be spoofed by ifconfig, so I'd reboot onto a livecd (to make sure that no initialization scripts had been modified) to see what the MAC is there. If it's still FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF, time to get a new NIC.

[cp0ff]

The ethernet card works normally with a live cd and in windoze98,
just not in my mandake installation.
this is what is so confusing since I've reinstalled alot even with a new download.

any thoughts?
thanks!
C.Poff

[cp0ff]

could this be some form of Denial Of Service attack?
how could I figure that out?
I'll be reading up on DOS attacks in the meantime.
thanks!
C.Poff

[cp0ff]

I was able to fix this problem by re-installing yet again-(fourth time now) but this time,
unlike before, I changed and lengthened all the passwords and it worked, just like before- effortlessly. This further supports my theory that there was some form of intelligence behind my problems and my password had been compromised.
I know re-installing is not the ideal was to solve anything, but for three minuites of work
resulting in a solution, Im not complaining!
my big lesson from all this...running GUI as root on a network IS as stupid as everyone
says it is!
lookout fellow newbies!..

C.Poff