If the NIC's IRQ settings are askew, yes. You have to remember you're dealing with something that's precise in how it recognizes and works with things connected to it. You can reconfigure your hardware or reconfigure the OS, but you're screwed until you do if there's a conflict.
Reminds me of something that came up here in the forum a few weeks ago. Guy couldn't get DSL to boot (or something like that). When he mentioned the age of his hardware, it reminded me of a problem I had with the way Dell had jumpered the hard drive in my NT box -- like 12-13 years ago. My computer worked fine in the way Dell had pre-configured NT, but it was totally messed up when I tried to install Linux because neither the hard drive nor ZIP drive was jumpered. At all. When I fixed it to suit Linux, it broke when I had to run NT. So I had to reconfigure NT.
Sometimes the OEMs set things up in screwy ways that work with their old Windows configurations but won't work with other operating systems (like Linux). If you do have an IRQ conflict related to that NIC, I'm almost willing to bet your computer -- or the one the NIC is from -- was assembled by Dell, Gateway (eMachines), Compaq (HP), or one of the other mass assemblers.
original here.