ethernet card vanishes on reboot

[Deboo Geek <knowledgeful@gmail.com>]

I have  a debian sarge on x86, kernel 2.4.25 as well as  2.6.8. The
former is  custom compiled and had been running fine till a few days
ago after I apt-get installed some hardware detecting and hardware
info packges. apt removed kudzu, discover and  2 - 3 more pckages.

After that I started getting errors like "/etc/modules.conf is
morerecent than /lib/modules/2.x/modules.dep" Now after every boot,
ifconfig returns a clear screen.. dmesg also doesn't say anything
about the network card. But lspcilists it and I can see it detected in
the bios..

I have to run modconf or insmod and manuallt load the 8139 module oin
every boot. What do I need to change to save this setting so I may be
spred the pain of loding it everytime?