FBSD 7.2 net application problems

I am very new to the BSD/unix OSes, and am trying to get a web server working to program and test page serves on. I had Apache 2.2 and PHP 5 working briefly, but then saw some problems during the boot process after sometimes booting with my broadband router turned off, and haven't been able to get a page since.

I have FreeBSD i386 7.2, and the network card is recognized as sis0 (another one, 'fxp0' worked very poorly just after I installed FBSD, so I use the sis0 card).
Currently the computer boots and appears to get a DHCP address assignment correctly, but loses all ping packets to any addresses except the assigned address. Sometimes the boot process will hang after the DHCP says it acquires a lease, usually with a "sis0: watchdog timeout" message.

Has anyone an idea of what might be causing the problem?
What configuration settings might be relevant?
How can I run more tests to see what the problem might be?
 
You might want to check your cat5 cable:
sis%d: watchdog timeout The device has stopped responding to the net-
work, or there is a problem with the network connection (e.g. a cable
fault).
From sis(4).
 
I don't think its the cable, I switched it out with another verified cable (330 successive not-lost pings).
Now the boot hangs at the "Starting apache22" message.
It occurred to me that I might be trying to use an already registered domain name. Could that be causing a problem?
 
I tried a different network interface card, and it is working much better. I think that the Netgear FA 311 card that I was using is not completely compatible with the sis driver that recognized it.
 
The fxp0 driver would get a DHCP assignment from the router correctly, but when pinging other devices on the network, would lose about half the packets sent, and was otherwise not great.

About the Netgear FA 311 card, either the network card itself was faulty, or the sis driver that was automatically assigned to handle it was not completely compatible. I don't know how to try other drivers.
 
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