3com nic cards are notorius for having problems. The best way to make this work is to disable the onboard nic, unless you need to use it, secondly, what I would do is the following. Manually enter the information to laod the nic in the autoexxec.ncf as if you were manually loading all the functions of the 3com card. You should have an existing line in the autoexec for the integrated nic.
From there, re-boot the server, if the server notices the nic plugges in but the slot is wrong, it should prompt you and say Incorrect slot number, correct slot number is blah blah blah. Press enter to accept the new setting etc.
Once you see that, you can change the autoexec.ncf to match the correct slot number. After that, run inetcfg and have it transfer the information.
If I recall, in the inetcfg, there is a feature to allow you to re-scan the devices (NICs) and that should see it.
Since this is a compaq, the only other tidbit I can offer is that you make sure that when you run the smart start cd, that the appropriate slot is showing the 3com card. As far as slot numbers go, on the back of the compaq computer, the slot number should be by each slot, or on the inside right where the card is screwed into the slot itself.
Hope this helps..
Mark C. Greenwood, CNE
m_jgreenwood@yahoo.com
CNE 4.11 and CNE 5 certified. BS Degree in MIS. Working in the industry for 8 years.
I work with NT servers, NDS for NT as well.
