Q I get the 'bringing up interface eth0 FAILED' error as Mandrake 10.1 is loading on my system. I'm dual booting Mandrake with Windows XP, and XP has no problem whatsoever with the network card - there's a cable plugged in and it works fine in XP. I've fiddled with the Hardware Configuration utility in Mandrake but this hasn't helped. The network interface is a Via Rhine 10/100 (or something like that) built into the motherboard. It's connected to a switch, which is also connected to an ADSL router and one other PC.
A When a system detects an interface but fails to bring it up, it can often be due to an issue with the chipset telling the kernel it can interrupt in a specific way, when in fact it can't. You can try adding 'noapic' to your kernel command line because this will switch the kernel back to using basic old PIC, which occasionally works better. VIA chipsets aren't always the greatest. However, once you have the workaround in place, you can add it to your boot loader configuration to avoid having to type it each time the system boots up. Switching from APIC to PIC isn't going to impact on any major parts of the system, unless you're starting to run out of IRQs, so it's safe to run the system long term with 'noapic' set.