I apologize for the vague title, but it was the only combination of words that could accurately convey my thoughts on an event that occurred yesterday.

I was updating graphics drivers on a spare computer. Nvidia 9800 GT, nothing fancy, just the latest WHQL: standard business. Upon install, the motherboard's onboard Ethernet port decided to flip out.

"Windows has detected errors with this device's IP bindings, [blah, blah, blah]." (In layman's terms, the device was not functional).

Uh, what?

There is absolutely no connection between the graphics drivers I was installing and the driver for the Ethernet NIC. None. I checked.

Sidenote: Apparently this may be an issue if you use Nvidia's networking drivers on certain motherboards, but this was not the case.

After some fruitless searching [the issue was even re-creatable in safe mode, ugh] to see if this ridiculousness ever happened to anyone else, I grabbed the mobo's driver disk, uninstalled the driver, scanned for hardware changes, and reinstalled.

Crisis averted. Let's blame Vista.