NIC eeprom problems (I think)

**floibler** · 01-12-2005, 01:23 AM

I know that this was discussed in some length some time ago, but I'm new to this forum and a bit of a linux newbie, so I thought I'd post my problem to see if anyone has come up with any solutions.

I've tried running knoppix (v3.7) on my machine which also runs windows xp with updates! Guess what whenever machine tries to dhcp eth0 it hangs. I can start with nodhcp but that if I try to do netcardconfig on that card it hangs again - as it happens I have two cards in that machine (one is idle) but whichever i use same problem.

My machine is connected to an old box running smoothwall (linux firewall/rooter) there is no problem with dhcp. I tried putting the knoppix disk in the smmothwall box (which also has two nic's but has never run xp) and gues what it was fine.

I've also tried DSL (Damn Small Linux) and that works fine.

So I suspect this is the old M$ screwing eeprom problem - has anyone solved it yet? preferably an easy solution that I can understand!

floi

**Harry Kuhman** · 01-12-2005, 02:51 AM

Originally Posted by floibler

... has anyone solved it yet? .....

Hi floibler,
I'm not sure what you mean by "solved it yet". I first saw it on my notebook. (for anyone who wants to follow this the old threads are http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtop...er=asc&start=0
and
http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtop...er=asc&start=0 ) In those threads I posted a technique that I could use to reset the card after booting and then Netcardconfig would work to get a DHCP configuration. More recently I have had to use cheat codes to boot the notebook, and somehow those cheat codes change things enough during boot that the NIC works after them (but if I boot an old V3.1 Knoppix disc that did work on the network on that notebook when it was first made, without cheat codes, it still fails).

The threads also gave links to some software that claimed to be able to reset the NIC permanently. I didn't want to risk using them, since if anything went wrong it might make the notebook unable to access the network at all, and so useless to me. But in your condition with easily removable NICs in a desktop I would consider myself very lucky. I would certainly give the reset tools a shot, as a dektop NIC is extremely cheap and easy to replace if something goes wrong. I would also consider replacing the NIC entirely. When doing this I strongly recommend the following: Get a new NIC, put the Knoppix CD in the drive before shutting down the computer, replace the NIC with a new one, boot directly into Knoppix without ever letting the NIC see your Windows system. If Knoppix supports that NIC and it still doesn't work then windows is not the issue (at least not the only issue in this one case); if the NIC works fine under Knoppix then it will be very interesting to see if it still works after running Windows (since whatever is happening doesn't seem to affect all NICs it would be even better if the new NIC was the same brand and model as one of the NIC that you know to have been affected). Also, while still in Knoppix, there are programs that can read the ROM on your NIC (again, see the above threads for links to them). I would take advantage of this and get a dump of what is in the ROM with Knoppix running, before you ever run Windows. Then if the ROM gets changed you'll have two things, both the smoking gun that will show that Windows is changing the ROM contents, and a copy of the original ROM so you can put it back the way it should be (sure wish I had that for my notebook, but HP support is useless).

I'm curious as to where you are. If you're in the U.S you'll find that NICs are dirt cheap, frequently free after a small rebate. Heck, if you lived in my town I would gladly bring over a few new ones and trade them for those suspect ones, so that I would have some corrupted ones that I could experiment with in a desktop rather than a notebook (even install the new ones if you wanted). I'm guessing they are not very expensive elsewhere, but am not certain of that.