UPDATE: After the lack of responses here, and the utter lack of helpfulness after Binging/Googling, I took the dive and bought a new Ethernet Shield. Ran the same code, worked on the first run. QED: Previous board was in fact a dud. I'm having difficulties getting my Arduino Ethernet Shield working…

[RESOLVED] Ethernet Shield stopping at "begin"

system September 10, 2012, 2:47am 5

SurferTim:
Do you have a memory card in the micro SD slot?

Nope!