Ethernet Card

[EZ22]

I just installed a new ethernet card, because I suspect my on board NIC was causing packet loss. So I installed an after market NIC and now when I boot, during the boot process, it shows my system looking for the MAC address, and then tries to register the DHCP...WHILE it is booting. I have never before seen this in my life and would like to get rid of it if possible.

Any ideas?

(I install these NIC's many times a week on other peoples computers and have NEVER had this come up.)

[pickel]

Should you have disabled the onboard before install the PCI card ??? I'd remove the card, re-install the drivers for the onboard and go to DSL reports and see what the transfer was.

[pickel]

Should you have disabled the onboard before install the PCI card ??? I'd remove the card, re-install the drivers for the onboard and go to DSL reports and see what the transfer was.

[davidamarkley]

No, no, no...

There's nothing wrong with it.

The NIC that you put in has a feature that can allow you to boot over the network from a server's hard drive and/or assign your NIC a DHCP IP address BEFORE even booting windows. Normally, you can hit Esc, and it will cancel the looking for the BOOT ROM server.

If you're looking for more info about this Network Boot stuff, you should check out Crouse's article on TechIMO Articles Section about a Linux distro that allows you to boot over the network so that a computer can run the entire OS and apps over the network, giving you a computer without the need for a hard drive in that computer. I believe it was called something like k12ltp or something like that.

Anyway, there's nothing 'wrong' with your NIC, it just has a feature that you haven't seen before.

Dave

EDIT: There may be a BIOS setting to disable the Boot ROM procedure, but I don't know whether that would effect only the Onboard or both Onboard and Add-in.