Windows 7: nic lost mac address

Anyone ever see the NIC get a mac of 00-00-00-00-00-00?
Changing it in driver advanced tab didn't stick. Used macshift and gave it a random one. Best guess I had is it lost its eprom. It was an issues on my dads pc I stopped by after work so I wasn't able to boot a proper OS to further diagnose.

Just thought I'd see if anyone here has seen it and pinpointed it to a specific cause (specific rootkit/virus, chipset fault, ...)

---------- Post updated 05-24-12 at 12:01 PM ---------- Previous update was 05-23-12 at 07:38 PM ----------

Apparently onboard NICs do this due to power issues and dumping their CMOS or BIOS FLASH areas. I guess manufacturers save a few cents putting it in an already existant reprogrammable chip than a small eprom.
So the problem was hardware, but fixable with utilites to reprogram the MAC.

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