Waiting for network configuration message at boot, then blank screen

When I boot (11.10), I get the message that it's "waiting for network configuration" and then the same, but "60 seconds longer" and then finially it "boots" but to a black screen. No cursor, just black. It doesn't seem to respond to anything.

I am able to boot with the "recovery" kernel and do anything you can normally do there. Except "root prompt with networking" doesn't actually have networking. ifconfig returns nothing. iwconfig says that eth0 and lo are uninitialized. I was going to load the networking kernel module, but I don't know which one to load. I am also able to boot with a live cd (technically a usb drive) and it boots fast with no messages/errors and networking works.

The networking adapter is from a Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4 motherboard.

I have read this: "Waiting for network configuration" adding 3 to 5 minutes to boot time

This doesn't seem to help my problem.

My /etc/network/interfaces had

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

So I added

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

This solution here: Network not starting up on boot Gives the error that /etc/init.d/dhcp3-server: file does not exist.