RIS and ASUS A7N266-VM with NForce onboard NIC

[edie209]

I have been having problems with PC's with Asus A7N266-VN motherboards with Nforce onboard NIC's

This problem has been haunting me for weeks and I have spent alot of my spare time on this. Anyway I have found a solution today so I thought I would share it with everyone here just incase.

nVidia motherboards installing Windows via RIS getting this strange error message:

"The operating system image you selected does not contain the necessary drivers for your network adapter"

as also described by MS in http://support.microsoft.com/?id=823658

*although* the network driver is correctly integrated into the image. Here's my point of view:

Motherboards with an nVidia chipset are somehow different, although the network adapter is available as a driver to the RIS setup it can't identifiy the device on the PCI bus therefore it fails to pick the correct driver inf file. nVidia chipsets don't view all devices on the PCI bus in a direct fashion meaning accessing the network controller there's a strange NVNRM driver necessary to make the network adapter appear as a common PCI Ethernet device on the bus.
I used a PCI scanner and was wondering why the network adapter appears as a unknown bridge device although it should be a common block device but then under a complete Windows installation the nVidia ethernet controller is available without any problem.
The nVidia network device is not enumerated until the nVidia bus driver is started, that one is used to control the bridge device. *Until* and this is where the angels meet the devil in freezing hell...
You must have a NVidia Boot Agent PXE BootRom Version higher than 201.xxxx

When installing the full nForce Driver Package under Windows a magic device called "nVidia Network Resource Manager" is installed to make the ethernet controller visible on the PCI bus. This is what was missing under a RIS setup and therefore lead to that strange error message.

Now where do i get that magic driver thing?
After searching the net up & down, i found those on an ASUS FTP server.

nForce < 5:
ftp://dlsvr01.asus.com/pub/ASUS/misc...2K&XP_V471.zip

nforce5:
ftp://dlsvr01.asus.com/pub/ASUS/misc...5_RIS_V916.zip

Integrate this driver *and* your nVidia network driver into the RIS image like described in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314479/

The drivers available at ASUS can be used for *any* board with an nForce chipset and not only for ASUS boards since i have an MSI board running a RIS setup with those drivers. nVidia himself describes the problem here:

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/n...i=&p_topview=1

For the RIS setup it's important that this driver is installed in the ./i386 drawer of the RIS image. It makes the ethernet controller *visible* and RIS runs like a charm

This was written by a MikeC on the nvidia forums but the links don't work anymore but don't worry I found this link ftp://dlsvr02.asus.com/pub/ASUS/misc/utils/nvidia/ and all the files I needed were there today.

There is also a PDF doc on the site relating to RIS

NVIDIA nForce2 MCP2S, NVIDIA
nForce3 250, and nForce4
Families
Configuring NVIDIA Networking
Drivers with Microsoft RIS
NVIDIA Confidential
Released Under NDA
DA-01349-001_v05
November 2004
DA-01349-001_v05 1
11/17/04 NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL
Install Networking Drivers
This application note describes how to configure NVIDIA® networking drivers
when using the Microsoft Remote Installation Services (RIS) to install OS images on
NVIDIA® nForce ™2 MCP2S, NVIDIA nForce3 250, and the nForce4 family of
products. (The NVIDIA nForce2 MCP2S family of products includes nForce2 RAID MCP
and nForce2 Gigabit MCP. The NVIDIA nForce3 250 family of products includes nForce3
250, nForce3 250Gb, nForce3 250 Pro, and nForce3 250 Ultra. The NVIDIA nForce4
family of products includes nForce4, nForce4 Ultra, nForce4 SLI, nForce Professional 2200, and
nForce Professional 2050).
For RIS installations, a network device attached to the PCI bus needs to be present.
For the NVIDIA nForce2 MCP2S, NVIDIA nForce3 250, and the NVIDIA
nForce4 families, the NVIDIA network device is not enumerated until the NVIDIA
bus driver is started. The NVIDIA bus driver is used to control the NVIDIA bridge
device.
Detailed Installation Procedure
The following steps describe the sequence needed for NVIDIA nForce2 MCP2S,
NVIDIA nForce3 250, and NVIDIA nForce4 RIS clients on Windows XP,
Windows 2000, and Windows 2003 Server.
Ensure that the installed BIOS contains PXE version 201 or greater. PXE version
can be seen in the PXE startup banner. A sample PXE startup banner is provided
below:
PXE Boot Agent 201.xxxx
1. Read Microsoft Knowledge Base Article #315279 for details on how to add
OEM Network Adapter Drivers to an RIS image.
(http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;315279)
2. This procedure is step 1 of article #315279:
If you are installing Windows XP onto your RIS client, copy the files contained
in nvriswxp.zip onto:
RemoteInstall\Setup\Language\Images\Dir_name\I386.
3. This procedure is step 1 of article #315279:
If you are installing Windows 2000 or 2003 Server onto your RIS client, copy
the files contained in nvrisw2k.zip onto:
RemoteInstall\Setup\Language\Images\Dir_name\I386.
Configuring NVIDIA Networking Drivers with Microsoft RIS
DA-01349-001_v05 2
11/17/04 NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL
4. This procedure is step 3 of article #315279:
You must copy the installation package for the NVIDIA NRM driver (that
is, netbus driver) to:
RemoteInstall\Setup\Language\Images\Dir_name\$oem$ \$1\
Drivers\Nic.
5. All other steps in article 315279 should be performed as specified.
6. After completing the above steps, you need to restart the boot information
negotiation layer, or restart the machine.
PXE may now be used to install the OS image onto the RIS client.

I hope this can be of some help to someone.

[Simcfc73]

I'll give this another go when I have time. I've got 18 machines which I built with NVIDIA chipsets which I couldn't get to RIS in the summer, ended up ghosting from a USB.

Think I tried this fix before though but I'd really like to get the RIS working.

[dezt]

I've got 30 machines all with MSI K7N2G motherboards in them and they have nvidia nic's. I use ghost to image the machines but i can't get hold of a dos driver for the nic.

Does anyone know where I might be able to get a dos driver for this motherboards nic?

[BKGarry]

I have a Universal boot disk that has most network card drivers if you PM i will give you a floppy image you can try.

It runs the ghost exe from the server so you might have to do a bit of rescripting but it is very simple.

Gaz

[dezt]

@Gaz

I've edited the bootdisk you sent me, thanks by the way, but i'm having a problem when i try to map a drive.

the error i get is:

Error 36: The system has detected an overflow in the sharing buffer.

have you come accross this before?

dezt

[BKGarry]

I haven't I'm afraid have you checked the website out that it tells you when your booting?

[dezt]

i've taken a look, no help on it but other people have the same problem.

I can get round it by copying ghost.exe into the ramdrive and running it from there.

Thanks again for the disk.

[BKGarry]

The disk is great if you have lots of varying NICs.

Makes it soo much easier for emergency imaging