Comment 14 for bug 960311

To summarize things as I understand them:
- The machine was ok about a week ago
- There has been no change in BIOS/or firmware
- The card fails after a certain uptime and is not accessible anymore
- This happens on all Precise kernels as tested now and even on an Oneiric kernel (which
  previously was ok)

This really sounds like a hardware problem. Unfortunately the NICs likely are onboard. Since in the initial dmesg, there is some life sign (interrupt assignment) from the second interface, have you tried to set that one up as a test.

VPD seems to be "vital product data" and from the symptoms it seems that the communication between driver and card dies at some point and when the driver attempts a recovery it fails to obtain certain hardware information. Like it would be expected when the firmware running on the card crashed for some reason.