Notice a server network card respond with "hardware error" on a ping and the box was off the network. reloaded the drivers and the system returned to normal. Notice that the driver had rolld back to a 2002 version, vmware setings for the adapter were  set to "flexible". Also, possibly unrelated, the esx host had been rebooted 3 days earlier.

The issue is related to vmware tools

VI3 seems to force the network adpater into flexible. In this scenario, the nic will pick up the vlance driver wich shows up as the PCI amd NIC.

The desired NIC is VMware accelerated AMD Nic, which is more stable. Not sure how to handle this on linux machine, but this could be a problem.

Resolution; On windows,

1. install vmware tools
2. open device manger
3. find network adapter
4. change the driver by
1. choose driver to install
2. browse to program files\vmware\vmware tools\drivers\vmxnet
3. select oeminf & click ok
5. The NIC will reload at 100 or 1000mbps.
6. The NIC will be stable now