Having just rebuilt a mini-itx PC using a 1.6G Gigabyte motherboard, I find either XP Pro or the Realtek network driver generally incapable of sustaining the LAN IP address for more than one in ten sessions, result: no network and a message on searching that the driver is "looking for an IP address" which it never finds.
I've forced it to what it should be for a home network but will it now remember this and why wasn't it able to find an address easily like all the other network devices I've used in the past?