First, I would test for the card with lspci, assuming it is a pci-card; here is my output (reduced to the interesting eth-card:
Code:
lspci
00:10.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
If your card is found, you may look for an matching module with 'lsmod', but perhaps it isn't a module, but build into the kernel. Google for your Intel VE with 'module' - I found something which says the module-name is 'e100' so you could do 'modprobe e100'.

A third step is to look for it by ifconfig, here is my output:
Code:
ifconfig eth0
eth0      Protokoll:Ethernet  Hardware Adresse 01:01:46:5A:9A:1E  
          inet Adresse:192.168.0.3  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Maske:255.255.255.0
          inet6 Adresse: ...
Is this pc a laptop? than it might be useful to search at
http://www.linux-laptop.net/ too.