NVIDIA nForce Ethernet (Self-Assigned IP)

[Matrinix]

I am using the NVIDIA nForce Ethernet driver that came with iPC 10.5.6 Final and after booting up, my DHCP server will assign an IP to my computer, but then after using Safari for like less than a minute, my ethernet connection will stop working, and if I go into the Network Settings and disable the ethernet interface and then re-enable it, it goes to a "Self-Assigned IP" state and won't change back to DHCP Assigned state until after I shut down my computer and leave it off for like a minute and boot back up. In this state, my ethernet is pretty much useless. I've gotten everything else working except for this. Thanks for any and all help. I've tried googling the answer to this problem but was unable to come up with a conclusive answer.

 

On a side and unrelated note, is there a way to update to the latest version of Leopard (is there a modified combo update available)? Also, is there any ETA for when a Snow Leopard distribution will be available? One other thing, is there a way to disable the verbose panics in Venom Kernel and use the standard Mac OS X panics? Thanks again!