Machine is trying DHCP... I CANT STOP IT!!!!! 1

[onrdbandit]

Howdy,

I just replace my mobo(running Award BIOS), and I have a cheap ethernet card for DSL internet access(which does work). It has Realtek Ethernet NIC drivers. On boot, my machine is trying to access DHCP. Just before it starts I press "Shift+F10" to "Enter Realtek Setup" or something along those lines. I chose to disable LAN boot, and from what I have found on other sites referencing this issue, that should prevent this from happening. Still it proceeds trying to access DHCP and holding up my boot time about a minute. I more than doubled the speed of my system with the upgrade, and more than doubled my boot time with it. This angers me somewhat.

Any help would be greatly appreciated...

Thanks,
onrdbandit

 

[Accessdabbler]

How do you know its holding up the boot due to DHCP?

What happens if you boot in Safe Mode or remove the network card and then boot?

 

[bcastner]

Your bios should allow you to decide the boot order of devices, and probably should include the ability to disable a device as a boot device.

Look there first.

 

[rwullems]

DHCP has not much to do with your NIC, it is the (MS?) software that drives DHCP. Mayby your NIC is trying to use PXE to boot from a RIS server or whatever, that is the LANBOOT function. You can disable it to save some time, but it is probably not the problem

If you don't turn of DHCP in Windows, and you don't have a DHCP server, MS (2000,XP) machines are going to use a so called APIPA address (Automatic Private IP Adressing, a MS construction) in the range 169.254.x.x. If this happens, it can take a minute or more before you machine is passing this stage. After a machine has assigned itself an APIPA adress, it wil look every five minutes for a DHCP server.

Normal DHCP does not takes minutes to initialize. It are just a couple of frames on your network to find an DHCP server, request and get an address. (This sequens is called DORA, Discover, Offer, Request and ACK, normally only 4 frames).

So, i don't know what OS you are running, but the changes are big that the problems are there.
Robert

Robert A.H. Wullems
Sniffer University Instructor
SCM / CNX / MCP
Citee Education
the Netherlands

 

[onrdbandit]

Howdy...

As to Accessdabbler's question, I get text onscreen that says something like this:

"Client MAC Address something, FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF"

then a line down it says:

"DHCP..." with the little progress dots afterwards.

Then I get this:

"No DHCP Offers detected"
"Exiting PXE ROM"

Then the boot continues normally. This doesn't seem to affect anything but my boot-time(I am on the machine right now), but it is a real pain. I will search by BIOS settings again and try to find a solution.

Thanks for the input... and any more ideas would be greatly appreciated.
onrdbandit

 

[onrdbandit]

I checked my BIOS settings, and disabled anything involving LAN boot or similar, but to no avail. I did figure out that I can cancle the DHCP detect with a keystroke, so that helps a little if I can find no other solution. The thing with all the "F"'s (above) has "GUID:" before it.


Thanks again,
onrdbandit

 

[bcastner]

Check your BIOS, I am positive the boot order has network device or something similar as the first device.

If your NIC has a very large chip on a socket (not spot soldered) take a small screwdriver and carefully lever it out of the socket.

 

[AFTech81]

bcastner is right. The PXE ROM allows a computer to perform a network boot. This is useful if you are using a computer without a hard drive. The chip on the NIC is what controls the network boot. Pop the chip out and see what happens.

Brian
USAF
Network +, Win2k Pro
No try not. Do or do not. --Yoda

 

[onrdbandit]

My NIC is a cheapo, and does not have a socketed chip... I got a little more BIOS info thought:

1st Boot Device- FLOPPY
2nd Boot Device- CDROM
3rd Boot Device- HDD
Other Boot Device- DISABLED

Onboard LAN Device- DISABLED
onboard LAN Boot ROM- DISABLED


This would seem to suggest that either my BIOS is screwed up, I can't read it correctly, or there is something (possibly the Realtek software?) that is overriding my BIOS settings for the LAN Boot...

Well... I have no idea...

Thanks for all the help, maybe with a little more assistance, I can get this thing licked and get out of your hair.

onrdbandit

 

[bcastner]

Try going here and get a new driver set for the NIC.

ftp://ftp3.real-communications.com.tw/cn/nic/rtl8139abcd8130810xseries/rtlsetup-8139(451).zip

 

[onrdbandit]

Thanks bcaster, but the dirver change didnt help either...

I think I will just be stuck hitting "Esc" when it tries to LAN boot. That is no biggie I guess. I honder if anyone else has had a similar problem...? Oh well, thanks for all the help everyone. If anyone can think of anything else to try, I am all for it.

Thanks,
onrdbandit

 

[manarth]

onrdbandit - reading what you've done so far, my guess is that the bios is trying to LAN boot - irrelevant of your settings. It may be worthwhile to flash your bios (and flash the NIC's chip if it supports that) with the latest firmware.

Check out the manufacturers' websites for firmware downloads & flash tools.

<marc> i wonder what will happen if i press this...[ul][li]please give feedback on what works / what doesn't[/li][li]need some help? how to get a better answer: faq581-3339[/li][/ul]

 

[bcastner]

onrdbandit,

What you should also see in the download package is a configuration utility.

Run the configuration utility to set the eprom on the adapter.

The setting change you need to make is to disable PXE.

If what you downloaded did not include the eprom programmer, look again at the site. It is there.

 

[onrdbandit]

Howdy,

Thanks for all the input and suggestions. I flashed my BIOS, didn't help, but didn't hurt either (that is always good).

I did figure it out thought... I had to re-configure the Realtek sofware. One of its settings was set to use PXE to boot, and evidently was overriding the BIOS settings I made. I thought I set the configuration when I installed the software, but I did not save the changes. It didn't catch my attention as the settings I chose were displayed when I re-entered the configuration, but the settings were not saved so the boot could access them.

Bottom line... PROBLEM SOLVED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(hallelujia!)

Thanks everyone....
onrdbandit