Comment 334 for bug 263555

Guys, I have an HP 8510w which is experiencing some interesting behaviour. I believe I may have had a graphics corruption first, though I don't recall if the problems started directly afterward. I'm definately running the e1000e driver, the machine has an NVIDIA Quadro FX570M (Mobile Version). The first thing I noticed was the Intel Boot agent in the BIOS reports the following;

Initializing Intel (R) Boot Agent GE v1.2.45
PXE-E05: The LAN adapter's confirguration is corrupted or has not been initialized. The Boot Agent cannot continue.

Then the eth0 device would no longer work. I found a link which I've posted at the end of this which talked about some work arounds etc using free dos and resetting the Intel Boot Agent using an Intel Program called IBAUTIL. I was at this point able to use the NIC while using windows, I was not able to use it using Linux, Linux would complain with a standard message in Yast that the card was corrupted and that therefore the module was not loaded.

I ran the procedure outlined using IBAUTIL and voila my linux ethernet worked again. However, upon booting up a day after it is back to being dead.

If this is indeed the same situation, this may be all we need to get info out of the card. Also, I may potentially have access to more of these machines that ARE going if that helps.

The windows OS will now not get an IP address either, which I assume isn't just about the address and rather about hardware failure. Event Viewer shows nothing as usual, where's the Windows DMESG!!!! Windows was working fine all day though.

I shall try this procedure again, but I expect I am now out of luck :(

If someone wants me to post some kind of image from a going one of these machines it might be possible, but I'll need to do it from an older version of Linux I expect :)

http://dance.richii.com/article238.html