Networking :: interface not working on Compaq/HP nx9020

I'm having difficulties getting networking to work. At start up DSL states that it's sending eth0 DHCP broadcast (and leaving it to background). When I'm checking ifconfig from console I'm not getting any feedback at all, not even loopback. Console looks like it's frozen, but it's not since I'm able to write text, but unable to ctrl+c. /etc/network/interfaces has only loopback interface and eth0. I don't know which chipseries this laptop is using, but basically the specs are following:

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11996_na/11996_na.HTML

any ideas ?

original here.