Since rebuilding my beloved T60 (to rid myself of all the pre-installed Lenovo bloatware), I have been having some serious issues with the NIC. The device would disappear at random times, regardless of the power state, and I had many an error within the System Event Viewer talking about the device "disappearing."
I could plug a network cable, get a link light on both the switch port and on the NIC, but nothing else would happen, and the device was nowhere to be found on teh system. In order to get the device to function, I had to open Device Manager and manually run "Scan for hardware changes" command.
Thanks to a bunch of postings on the thinkpads.com forum (this one in particular), I have found a solution... disable "Deep Smart Power Down," which apparently isn't that smart. You can do this from Device Manager, go to the network card properties and review the Advanced tab.
