Back again!
first things first.
motherboard
Code:
Motherboard Properties:
      Motherboard ID                                    63-0201-000010-00101111-091605-945PL$A0355000_BIOS DATE: 09/16/05 11:07:08 VER: 08.00.10
      Motherboard Name                                  ASUS P5PL2

    Front Side Bus Properties:
      Bus Type                                          Intel NetBurst
      Bus Width                                         64-bit
      Real Clock                                        200 MHz (QDR)
      Effective Clock                                   800 MHz
      Bandwidth                                         6400 MB/s

    Memory Bus Properties:
      Bus Type                                          Dual DDR2 SDRAM
      Bus Width                                         128-bit
      Real Clock                                        267 MHz (DDR)
      Effective Clock                                   533 MHz
      Bandwidth                                         8533 MB/s

    Chipset Bus Properties:
      Bus Type                                          Intel Direct Media Interface
NIC; (only one!)

Code:
 Realtek RTL8168/8111 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC ]

    Network Adapter Properties:
      Network Adapter                                   Realtek RTL8168/8111 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC
      Interface Type                                    Gigabit Ethernet
      Hardware Address                                  00-15-F2-08-0F-ED
      Connection Name                                   Local Area Connection
      Connection Speed                                  100 Mbps
      MTU                                               1500 bytes
      DHCP Lease Obtained                               30/09/2006 12:33:52
      DHCP Lease Expires                                01/10/2006 12:33:52
      Bytes Received                                    49832832 (47.5 MB)
      Bytes Sent                                        2858125 (2.7 MB)

    Network Adapter Addresses:
      IP / Subnet Mask                                  192.168.1.2 / 255.255.255.0
      Gateway                                           192.168.1.1
      DHCP                                              192.168.1.1
      DNS                                               192.168.1.1
ok,
i booted up knoppixand tried using other ip addresses for the computers ip address. when i then tried to ping the outside world i simply got the message network not found. One thing i did notice when knoppix was booting up was after it found eth0,it brought up the message "DHCP broadcasting for ip (backgrounding)" (dont know if thats pertinent or not)

so i then re-booted knoppix and started ethereal (as root) before i ran netcardconfig. ethereal could not find eth0 at all, so i quit the application and ran netcardconfig. This time ethereal found eth0 so i started the capture process. Nothing happened until i tried to ping to ping 216.32.81.146. ethereal gave a few lines of the following;
Code:
source        destination    protocol     info
(blank)       (blank)         ARP           (malformed packet)
at this point the only thing i could think to do was to try and reconfigure my NIC to use DHCP, this gave a few lines of the following;
Code:
source        destination             protocol        info
0.0.0.0       255.255.255.255         DHCP           DHCP Discovery Transaction ID 0x69140600
ethereal then quit itself complaining that it could not find eth0

So i'm not sure where to go from here, any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.