Thanks Dean,

Sorry, too careless. I actually tried it, unplugged the power cord, but wasn' t wise enough to take battery out (Yes, my first laptop!). Unfortunately problem is only partially solved; When booting from XP to Suse ethernet will not work, I have to unplug power cord and battery everytime. There might be work-around, disabling "wake on lan" from bios (if option available) or using old nvidia forcedeth-driver?

http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux_nforce_1.0-0310.html

Thanks again,

H.