Realtek 8111e vs. Precise

[MR ZenWiz]

I picked up a new motherboard last Friday, an MSI 970A-G46, that has
the noted LAN controller on board, and when I first brought it up it
ran flawlessly.  Saturday morning I replaced one of my DVD writers and
my secondary hard disk, and the LAN died.  I thought it was the
hardware, since it was working before the power cycle, but I got an
exchange yesterday afternoon and it has the same problem.

I found this writeup on the problem,
http://www.twm-kd.com/linux/realtek-rtl81688111e-and-ubuntu-linux/, so
I figured that would be it, but....

1. The write-up says the problem is fixed in Precise, which is what I run.

2. The link to the Realtek site where the driver should be
downloadable, http://www.realtek.com/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=13&PFid=5&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false,
appears to be the right page, but the download links fail to load.

I called MSI Tech Support, but they're Linux-ignorant (no surprise
there) - they insist I have to diagnose this with Windows.  (They'll
be getting feedback about that when I get the thing working again.)

I have two questions:

1. I've never tried booting Windows to run from a CD/DVD or a flash
drive - is that even possible?

2. Does anyone know enough about this to hazard a suggestion, other
than to get a different m/b?

I confess, I did not check the system logs - I've been doing Linux for
over 13 years, consistently for the last 6, and I still forget this
one (mental barrier of some kind - I'd check them in Windows...).

(I temporarily solved the problem by putting a PCI NIC in the box, and
that works fine, but it's old 10/100 and I prefer not to have to use
add-in cards for that sort of thing.)

Thanks.

MR