I'm reposting on my original fix. A year has gone by of the sytem running flawless, a reboot of the system to install version 5.1 and the install failed looking like corrupt installation media. A few versions and burns later no fix. Tried to boot back to version 5.0 and the errors about buffer to small came back up. After searching and seeing my old post and verifying that the nic was still disabled in the bios and trying to disable other onboard components in bios I was puzzled. I began to think about buffer and thought it could be memory related. I began to take some memory out and shuffle around and voila!!! I had one bad memory stick causing the issues. I could boot back to original version 5.0. I was able to install 5.1. And best part is that I enabled the onboard realtek NIC and now it shows up as well. Just need to redo my networking to test it and take advantage of a 2nd connection.
I new the vmware software was a rockstar and solid, just didn't think to check a memory stick at first.
I hope this helps some others from pulling their hair out.
J