you have just discovered that NT is NOT a plug and pray operating system. I have also had difficulty with NIC detection in the NT setup programs. The solution if you are installing the workstation version is to simply skip the network portion of the setup and install the adapter manualy once the os has completed loading. This method can also work in NT server however, things can get a bit sticky depending on the role the server is going to play.
the best plan is to make sure you have a good set of drivers for your card on a floppy somewhere so that there is no searching. If you are still having problems, test the card in a different machine with 95 or 98 installed to determine whether or not your problem is hardware or software related

hope this is of some help

JinXXXd1