Whenever I have network trouble with my empegs, it's ALWAYS the failure to complete DHCP negotiations. They just don't seem to like my DHCP server most of the time.

You've mentioned this a number of times. I've never seen that happen. I don't doubt your results, though.

Is it possible that it takes your switch a long time to fall back to 10Mbps/half duplex? I had a similar problem once (although it had to do with STP reconfigs and not ethernet negotiation).