Discussion:
Windows Boot Trouble with Multiple NICs
Ryan Melena
2011-06-09 14:03:09 UTC
Permalink
Hello all,

I've been doing some work to separate my LAN and iSCSI network
infrastructure and have run into an issue.

My PC is booting from an Etherboot USB thumb drive and has 2 NICs. The
onboard Atheros NIC (Net0) is used for LAN traffic and is on the subnet
192.168.10.0/24. The add-on Intel NIC (Net1) is used for iSCSI traffic and
is on the subnet 192.168.12.0/24. Both subnets offer DHCP.

My problem is this, if Net0 is plugged in during boot (and thus receives an
IP address via DHCP during gPXE initialization) my Windows boot will hang at
the Windows start-up screen and eventually the PC with restart. If,
however, Net0 is unplugged during boot everything proceeds as expected.
Once the computer has finished booting I can reattach the Net0 cable and it
happily grabs and IP and everything works.

Does anyone have an idea as to why having Net0 plugged in during boot would
be breaking my Windows boot?

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