[Hampshire] Linux miracle cure?

Hi all,

We've had an unusual problem with a particular model laptop at work
recently (HP 6710b). The network card stops working, though it still
reports network cable as being plugged in and the lights flash away
merrily. The card will not pick up an IP address through DHCP and will
not communicate with a static IP assigned either.

On the first of these, I booted PCLinuxOS to test whether the fault was
hardware or software. Card works fine in Linux so I reboot to Windows
and suddenly the card works there too. Now, it's not the reboot as that
had already been tried and it's not coincidence because it's fixed the
fault on two other laptops since. I'm certain using any flavour of Linux
would have the same results, but does anyone have any idea why? The
laptops use Broadcom ethernet if that's relevant in this case.

Regards,

James