nixCraft

I have been having issues with my ethernet card with the nVidia MCP61.
I spent a lot of time looking into the forcedeth driver,and the newest kernels trying to find a cure for my problems.
Although a most recent kernel may be necessary,as well as the forcedeth drivers installed,I have also found that the MCP61 includes a on-chip firewall.
This firewall is present before any OS even loads.
With a warm re-boot,I have never got another distro to connect,strike that,recieve data from the internet.

Performing a cold boot,I have seen the same distros connect and recieve data just fine.
Then,sometimes,the same distro that connected without problems from a cold boot,now will not recieve data.

I say recieve data,rather than establish a connection,because the MCP61 ethernet card is recogonized and activated.
But still,no browser will recieve data,and ping doesn't respond.
Entering ifup eth0 results in interface already configured.But still,I recieve no data from my browser.

It appears this firewall that nVidia has included in it's MCP61 chip,does not release the bios on a warm reboot,and even sometimes a cold boot,and remembers the parameters from an earlier OS,and creates all sorts of problems such as I am describing.

Does anybody know how to fix this problem with the MCP61 firewall?
Preferably,by turning it off.
I have been through my bios a hundred times,and I see no option there.
I have been told,that it has been suggested that the bios can be accessed through a web browser.
Anybody know what the address might be?

A few links for those who may of never even heard of the firewall I speak of.
NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb Preview - Icrontic.com
Bjorn3d.com -Multi-GPU World Tour 2006, Part 3 - Choosing the right motherboard, Satisfying Your Daily Tech Cravings Since 1996
ActiveArmor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
nForce3 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
First Chipsets for Socket 939 Athlon64 - PCSTATS.com