FA 311 Network card

I have an FA 311 NIC running under SuSE 7.3. Occasionally the following message shows up in the /var/log/messages log: "linux kernel: eth0: Setting full-duplex based on negotiated link capability. " It seems that when this message happens the card stops responding until a manual ping is done on the system. In the driver parms in YAST I have "10BaseT-FD". That did not seem to make a difference. Has anyone experienced this or have a solution?? Robert