Wahhey, problem on the thinkpads solved. Turns out to be a
bios setting that must be turned off. Its the PCI Power
Management that is causing the problem. Personally I think
the kernel should be able to handle this properly, i.e.
power back up the pci subsystem to enable access to the
adapters.
This may take some hacking around to achieve,
so for the moment if you're having this problem, simply
turn off the setting in the bios.