I have just tested this on my system Windows XP Pro, with all Windows Updates. It works fine. I can disable my card and it will still work correctly.
The last version that was tied to the Network card was 2.014, their might have been another version after this such as 2.016, but this was released on a limited basis.
All of the 2.1xx and up should work fine if your card were to break. There must be something else that is also changing, somewhere.
All you would need to do, is reinstall Hoster and it should then work.
What version of Windows are you running? Do you have all of the Windows Updates installed on your computer from:
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com