Glad to hear you solved it.

I suspect the new adapter cards can still be used if you set the Virtual Network Editor to recognize the new hardware.  Hypervisors can only use the hardware they are configured for and since the network adapter changed, the config must change too.  Note below that my Network Editor is showing my PCI extension card's network adapter.  If I swap with a different one, VMware needs to be configured to recognize it.

Hope that helps...

Ray C