Under heavy I/O load on virt mach the virtual Network loses connection

I am running vmware server 1.0.3 on a host running Windows 2003 Server Enterprise X64 SP2.  The box is a Dell PowerEdge 2900 with dual quad processors and 12 gigabytes of RAM.  The virtual machine is also Windows 2003 Server Enterprise X64 SP2, with 300 gigabytes of disk, with 1.5 gigabytes of RAM - configured as a domain controller.

I have two gigabit NICs on the host motherboard, BroadCom NetExtreme II.  I have one dedicated to the host(without VMware bridge protocol), and one available for the virtual machine.

The host shows the two connections at 1 gigabit.   The virtual machine shows one vmware bridged connection at 1 gigabit with a static IP address.

When I try to copy a large amount of data, 50 gigs, the process dies about 10 % of the way through because the NIC loses connectivity.

I have downloaded and installed the latest BroadCom NIC drivers from Dell, 3.0.5.0.

The two NICs are hooked to a gigabit switch along with an up link connection to a cable modem.

When I stop and restart the Virtual Machine, the connection comes back...any ideas?

config.version = "8"

virtualHW.version = "4"

numvcpus = "2"

scsi0.present = "TRUE"

scsi0.virtualDev = "lsilogic"

memsize = "1536"

scsi0:0.present = "TRUE"

scsi0:0.fileName = "Spock.vmdk"

ide1:0.present = "TRUE"

ide1:0.fileName = "auto detect"

ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"

floppy0.present = "FALSE"

Ethernet0.present = "TRUE"

Ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"

displayName = "Spock"

guestOS = "winnetenterprise-64"

priority.grabbed = "normal"

priority.ungrabbed = "normal"

ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"

workingDir = "."

scsi0:0.redo = ""

ide1:0.startConnected = "TRUE"

ethernet0.addressType = "generated"

uuid.location = "56 4d 24 64 6b 61 13 a0-93 64 5e 44 da f4 49 c0"

uuid.bios = "56 4d 24 64 6b 61 13 a0-93 64 5e 44 da f4 49 c0"

ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:f4:49:c0"

ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"

tools.syncTime = "FALSE"

autostart = "poweron"

Ethernet1.present = "FALSE"

Ethernet1.connectionType = "hostonly"

Ethernet1.virtualDev = "e1000"

ethernet1.addressType = "generated"

ethernet1.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:f4:49:ca"

ethernet1.generatedAddressOffset = "10"

usb.present = "TRUE"