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[SOLVED] Problems with Asus Z87-K MB: NIC Does not reset after boot
2014-03-10, 10:18 (This post was last modified: 2014-03-10 11:15 by sebastian.)
Post: #11
RE: Problems with Asus Z87-K MB: NIC Does not reset after boot
Now I was able to wireshark while there was no traffic on the network, so I could run the packet capture with no filters at all.

Turned out that a IP filter set on 192.168.1.65 also filters out ICMP traffic for some reason (or it ignores broadcast traffic).


Can now confirm that ICMP traffic are sent out when making broadcast pings from the iPXE computer when its in a "broken state" (wont get DHCP), so the transmit path is fine but not receive path.
Sorry for the misleading information, it was due to Wireshark filters because when I tested last, there was multiple users on the network downloading gigabytes of updates and such, so I could not run wireshark without filters because of all garbage traffic.

Now today the network was completely clear and vacant of traffic so I could run wireshark without filters.



Note that the bug only appears if the computer have completed a boot into Windows 7, for some reason, regardless of if this windows 7 is locally installed or installed on a iscsi-target. If the computer do not complete the boot into Windows 7 due to a premature Power loss or boot error, the iPXE will successfully DHCP on a subsuquent boot. Same when the computer is Cold rebooted (eg by turning off the switch on the Power supply)

Its only when a complete boot in Windows 7, that the network card is put into a state where it wont be able to receive traffic, but the card works fine while inside Windows 7.
Have tried poking around in the advanced settings and changing things that can prevent the NIC from receiving packets, like "green Ethernet", "Power saving mode" and such nonsense, but does not seem to have any effect.

Here is the official driver.
See if you can analyze the driver and see if it sets some state that cause iPXE to be unable to receive traffic:
http://support.asus.com/download.aspx?SL...Z87-K&os=8
FOUND THE SOLUTION!

Poked around in the Network card settings.

Found out that there was a setting "automatic link-down to 10MBIT on poweroff" that was set to "enabled".
Disabling this default setting, made the network card fully functional.

Maybe iPXE should look into this and add a patch in the network driver that saves all NVRAM/temporary network card settings somewhere, this could also be accomplished by a HTTP upload, like this:
"savesettings http://www.server.se/script.php"
that will do a HTTP upload to scrpt.php with all settings that you know work.
And then this uploaded file on server will contain a #!ipxe script that contains all settings read from card.
Basically, iPXE could pretend like you took a #!ipxe file and put into a <input type=file> box, so a php script can easly be used to receive this file.
This file is then added as a embedded script, and the network card settings will be preserved each boot, regardless what windows does with the settings.

And then you can add all these settings to a embedded script that restores the settings on each bootup, preventing Windows from garbaging the settings inside network card.

the culprit setting:
[Image: b98DyRBl.png]

Default setting was to linkdown to 10mbit. Changed it to no speed down.
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RE: Problems with Asus Z87-K MB: NIC Does not reset after boot - sebastian - 2014-03-10 10:18



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