[ltp] Curious WiFi issue dual booting w/T42 running Suse10.3

[portsample]

I have a dual boot system on my T42 where my hard drive is shared
between Suse 10.3 and WinXP. Earlier today I was connected into my
wireless hub using WinXP, shut down and rebooted into Suse 10.3, at
which point I could not get the wireless modem to be detected. I
basically did a reinstall w/absolutely no luck. Rebooted, the whole
works...no modem. 

THEN, I booted into WinXP to download a file, did so, shutdown WinXP and
rebooted Suse at which point the modem was detected again and now is
fine. 

Curious, eh? It appears that there was something about the modem that
wouldn't allow access until I'd done another WinXP boot. The modem is
the stock internal unit that came w/the laptop and I am using a native
driver, (NOT ndiswrapper).

Does anyone have any ideas what may have happened? Thanks.