Realtek card detected but card not turning on

[Recouper]

I have a RTL8139/810. I'v got a Puppy 3.01 and Windows XP dual boot system. The ethernet card works great in Windows XP but when I try to set it up in Puppy, the wizard finds the card and advises that it is connected to a network, but the LEDs on the back of the netork card and the port activity LED on the router are all dead.
When I boot into Windows XP, all those LEDs light up about halfway through the boot sequence.
My router is a DHCP and DNS server.

[Recouper]

I found a setting in my BIOS the activates the network card before any OS starts to load.
So I managed to fix my own issue.
Still, it does leave some unanswered questions...