Intel i350-T2 NIC stops computer from booting

[KilauOne]

Does anyone have any idea why installing an Intel i350-T2 network card into my Asus P8Z68-V LX motherboard would cause the computer to hang on BOOT?

The BIOS is up to date (ver 4105 - dated 7/1/2013), and the system boots fine into Windows 10 x64 if I pull the card. I have tested the NIC on another system and the i350-T2 works fine. I have looked through the BIOS settings and cannot find anything that seems to pertain to problem.

I have tried the i350-T2 in both PCI-E slots on the motherboard, with the same results. The computer turns on, the Asus full screen display comes on, and the system locks up. Even pressing the DEL key (to enter the BIOS) does nothing. The only thing I can do is hit the power button and turn the system back off.

The card works on a system using a Asus P6TD motherboard with a BIOS dated 9/21/2010 (ver 0608)

Any help or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Y0GI]

Did you try going into the BIOS and disabling the Realtek® 8111E , 1 x Gigabit LAN Controller?

Yogi

 

[KilauOne]

I just checked the BIOS and the Realtek is disabled. I also tried loading the BIOS defaults and even added another 8 meg of memory to the system (bringing the total up to 16) but the results are the same. System will boot without the NIC but hangs on Logo screen with card installed.

It is probably something simple, but it eludes me.

 

[KilauOne]

SOLVED !!!!!

It took me several days of research, trying many settings , and about 50 or so reboots, but today I worked out the solution. Hopefully what I learned will help others in the future.

First, there seem to be a lot of people who talk about installing an i350 and then the computer hangs at boot. There was a post by Intel on their forum that said the i350 was a server adapter and recommended finding a desktop adapter. Another person said he started his computer without the NIC, and then installed it into a live PCI-E slot (/shudder) and when he rebooted the system 24 hours later the NIC worked. (I really don’t recommend hot swapping cards)

I finally decided to take a look at Intel’s Boot Agent. It turn out that even if a computer cannot “Boot from a Network” , the i350s will always attempt to add themselves into the Boot Device Priority. (See http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-008018.htm for more info). So I thought that maybe my BIOS did not know how to handle the card’s request to act as a boot device, resulting in a hung BIOS.

This solution only works if you have another computer that can boot with the i350 installed.

This solution is for those who aren’t afraid to dig around and rewrite firmware settings. If you are a person who is afraid of poking around in the Windows registry, this solution may not be for you.

1) Download and install Intel BootUtil (https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/19186)
2) Open a command prompt window WITH Run as Administrator. (BootUtil will not run without Administrator elevation)
3) Navigate to the BootUtil directory. Using the install defaults, the path for BootUtil was C:\Intel20.3\APPS\BootUtil\Winx64 with an executable of bootutilw64e.exe (There are separate directories for DOS, EFI, and Win32)
4) Run bootutilw64e (without arguments) and view the settings for your NIC. Under the heading Flash Firmware, you will probably see “PXE Enabled” This means the NIC is trying to behave as a bootable device when it powers up.
5) Run bootutilw64e –all –bootenable=disabled (A full list of option/arguments can be found at http://www.intel.com/support/network/adapter/pro100/bootagent/sb/cs-008212.htm )
6) Run bootutilw64e without arguments again. Under flash Firmware it should now report “PXE” and not “PXE Enabled”
7) Power down your computer, remove the NIC, and install it the computer that was hanging at boot.
8) Problem Solved – The card is no longer a bootable device so the BIOS loads normally and the computer works.

Hopefully others will benefit from my experience

 

[Y0GI]

That is some nice detective work, KilauOne! Congratulations on solving a very complicated problem!

Yogi

 

[trialgeek]

thanks for the post. we were facing the same problem on asus x99-deluxe and it got resolved when network boot was disabled in the bios.

 

[trialgeek]

Asus x99-deluxe with i7-5820k + 64 gb gskill (8x8gb)+i350t2
we did not flash the firmware on the NIC as advised but just disabled the "boot from network card" and also disabled the onboard NIC .At least the Asus bios should have shown that it was trying to boot through the network card ,instead of a blank screen, as in like Intel original boards which could have helped things get resolved faster
Hope this helps others too and hope ASUS listens too.