[CentOS] Kernel/harware question

Hello,

I have an IBM Netvista and since kernel 2.6.9-34.0.2, I have not been able to upgrade to the latest kernel. If I do, in about 8 hours, the system becomes sluggish almost unresponsive. Currently I am running 4.6 but with the kernel mentioned above.

I think I may have figured out the problem. It seems when I reboot with the new kernel, kudzu runs and wants to configure a different driver for this card, Intel Pro/100. If it does, it will cause the problem I mentioned. If I don't let it update the driver, it seems to be fine.

So my question is how can I force it to use the driver from kernel 2.6.9-34.0.2? Is it something I need to add to grub.conf?? If so, what?

TIA