Well, I've reinstalled the OS and I'm happy to say that it worked!

My only guess is that there was something wrong with my original NIC and having it as a zombie on the system was preventing the current NIC from binding properly.

Did you ever see anyting in the log that I posted which would have indicated the problem?

Whatever the reason, it works now. Thank you for all of your help. If I can find it, I'm going to post the exact name of the old NIC so that no one else has to go through this process again.