Removing 'Ghost' Ethernet card/driver in Windows XP

I wondered if you could help me with the following problem:

Basically original mboard failed so replaced it with a P4 C800 Deluxe
board, as we couldn't get same board as before.

Because this new board already has built-in Ethernet on it there was
no need to plug the old card in.

Booted up from existing HD and obviously got the blue screen error.
Clicked OK and accepted it.

Windows tech notes say when changing any hardware we should do the
following:

Boot up from Windows CD

Choose re-install Windows and NOT 'R' for repair.

When Windows goes through re-install it detects existing Windows and
asks if you want to repair this, which it does by removing all of the
drivers and re-installing the 'found' ones.

Restarted (everything OK) and went back to MS web site to reapply the
29 updates that it needed to update the system.

Everything fine except that when I go to put in TCP/IP settings into
the on-board Ethernet card Windows warns me that the settings are in
use by the old card (an SMZ card), which is not physically installed.

This is my exact problem I need to remove this 'card/driver' from the
system and I can't.

If I go to Device Manager and click 'Show Hidden Devices' (because it
is not installed) you can see the old SMZ card, but if you try to
uninstall it Windows brings up a message saying 'Cannot uninstall
because Windows may need it to boot system...'. You can disable the
card, however when you reboot with the card now disabled you still
can't remove it at the 2nd attempt and get the same warning message as
before.

I've tried this in Safe Mode (F8) and it comes up with the same
warning message and I've tried it with a Clean Boot (via MSConfig),
but I can't see it to uninstall it then.

How do I get rid of the old card, which has TCP/IP settings attributed
to it?

In desperation, I physically installed the old card back into the new
board, however doing this makes the Device Manager see this as a new
entity and logs it as SMZ Ethernet Card #2. I can uninstall and
remove this new entity as many times as I want, but I can't delete the
old one.

FYR, the PC is running Service Pack 1 and has all the latest web
updates as of this morning.

I've run RegClean, WinDoctor and EZClean and all have come up blank
when it comes to this problem.

Do you know how to get round this?

Rgds

Robbie