Intel network card MAC address all zeros

I spent nearly two weeks trying to figure out why my freshly sysprepped image worked fine on any one PC, but when I brought it down on multiple PCs, I lost connection on all but one. I remembered interrupting sysprep on one of my images, but couldn't remember which one, so I thought that was the issue. I re-sysprepped and "YAY!" - it worked...or NOT!

Checked with our admin guys, and I ended up posting a question on Experts Exchange to see what they could come up with.

Well, in the end, someone there pointed me to the faulty Intel drivers link above and sure enough, with "ipconfig /all" I got all zeros for my MAC address. Apparently you can get an IP in DHCP with an all zeros MAC - but all the PCs with this MAC address get the same IP.

OK, the link says to load the old drivers. I browse to my motherboards website, sort to the NIC drivers, then XP and scroll down and...ummm....ok. The Intel guy on the Intel site said to download and install the older driver. Wouldn't you think they would have an older driver on their site? Nope.

So, a word of caution before you update your XP Intel NIC drivers - don't!