vmnics show down but still have links.

I have a ESX 3.0 server that is having an issue with 2 of the 3 NICs.  1 of them show as down but they still have a link light on and i can ssh to the host using the IP address assigned to one of the "down" NIC's.  I have tried reseting them using esxcfg-r as well as esxcfg -d full -s 100.

Here is the error I am getting when i run the  esxcfg -d full -s 100 command:

1. esxcfg-nics -s 100 -d full vmnic1

Error: Exec of command '/usr/sbin/esxcfg-boot -i' suceeded, but returned with non-zero status: 255

Aborted

Here is what my esxcfg- l command returns:

1. esxcfg-nics --l

Name    PCI      Driver      Link Speed    Duplex MTU    Description                                                                      

vmnic2  02:02.00 3c90x       Down 0Mbps    Half   1500   3Com Corporation 3C905C -TX Fast Etherlink for PC Management NIC

vmnic1  02:01.00 3c90x       Down 0Mbps    Half   1500   3Com Corporation 3C905C -TX Fast Etherlink for PC Management NIC

vmnic0  01:04.00 tg3         Up   1000Mbps Full   1500   Broadcom Corporation Broadcom Vigil B5700 1000Base-T

Anyone seen this or can tell me how to fix it?

Chris