the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

just to recap,

my linux box had sporadic connections to the internet to the point where i could no longer connect no matter what i did.  in the past, i had removed and re-installed a network connection service within linux.  i had removed (right down to reformatting the HD) my linux OS and reinstalled it from scratch.  i even tried installing (after reformatting again) another distro.  all of these temporarily worked, but quickly stopped after 2 or 3 connection attempts.  during this time, my other computer (winNT) had no problem connecting but it was slow.  i had past the slowness off to the fact that the winNT OS has been acting flaky for a long time now, but we hardly use it so i never investigated it.  i disconneced my switch (both power and ethernet cables) for a few minutes then reconnected.  nothing i tried seemed to work long term.  i finally disconnected the switch and brought it into work so that i could take picts of the ser. # and send it in to DaneA.  the switch did not get reconnected for approximately 24 hours.  after reconnecting the switch, everything seemed to work fine and has remained so for about a week now.  this is the longest i've been trouble-free of this problem since it started.

oh, and something that may or may not be related, is that last night, my phone line went dead, but my DSL line remained active.  this morning, after calling the phone company, i found that my DSL line was also dead.  they fixed the line(s) and everything is back up and running.  they said that the line problem could have caused my lines to act flaky since my phones were dead but the DSL wasn't.  although i have not experienced any phone problems until last night and the internet connection problem has been going on for several months, i'm not sure if this is related, but i'm also not willing to rule it out.  (i'm thinking like maybe some kind of electrical short where the connections are sporadic).