NIC issue

6/4/04 I was on the Internet through SBC dsl, a bunch of
popups erupted, then I got knocked off.
I had Norton Live Protect running, but my networking went
down, along with my NAV.dat files, which were updated
5/25/04.
Upon checking in Device Manager, my nic has a exclamation
in a yellow circle, and device staus shows, " the
ndis.vxd, ntkern.vxd device loaders for this device,
could not load the device driver. Code 2 ". In network
properties, my nic is not bound to tcp/ip, nor can I do
so, as it is not listed in bindings. I tried adding
tcp/ip, and entering the network configs, but upon
rebooting, it disappears again. I have tried removing the
nic and reinstalling, to no avail.
I tried system restore, with no luck. I reinstalled
Windows ME, no change.
I have since updated NAV through dial-up, and run a full
systems scan, no infection shows.