Two questions:

1. why would this happen? (answer 42 or fish?)

2. I have to re-enter all the network card stuff manually

insmod rtl8139 route add network stuff restart samba daemons etc etc each time the box restarts...a).why doesn't the rtl8139 module get discovered automatically (it is in etc/modutils) and b)can I add all this stuff to a startup script in debian?

If you add "rtl8139" to the end of the "/etc/modules" file it should load the module everytime the machine boots. Then rest of the boot scripts will startup ifconfig and route before samba does. (Assuming you have all the correct entries in /etc/network/interfaces file for eth0).

D.