I have to ask 
Why are you running recovery to start with? As in if a power surge broke the nic, recovery probably will not work.
You did check the hash of the download? You are mounting the iso as a drive, you did not burn a DVD?
Set the desktop to get an ip (dhcp) and conect it directly to the server.no switch, hub, or router, just direct. Reboot both and try again. It is always a bad idea to power of the DX, but if it is broke and not getting any better you do not have much choice do you.
