24H2 + HP Pro Mini 400 G9. NIC disconnects, doesn't reconnect.

[pete]

Yup, it's an "has anyone else had this?" post.

 

We have a batch of HP Pro Mini 400s and we've put 24H2 on them.  They have the latest (as of 2 weeks ago when I rebuilt the driver stores) firmware and drivers.  We've tested 24H2 on these and various other bits of hardware lying around to iron out any quirks......or so we thought.

 

Some of them (1-2 in a room of 31) will quietly drop the network connection and not resume it while they're actively being used.  The switch doesn't log anything (disconnect, for example) or bad traffic on the port.  There's no pattern so far on when it happens.

 

They're connected to Aruba switching (gig PoE+, loop-protect and spanning-tree on) and the patch leads in the rooms have been inspected and replaced as part of the refit.  Testing the network jacks shows no issues.

 

Symptoms are dropping the network connection (no lights next to the NIC) and not re-establishing the connection until either the ethernet cable is unplugged and re-inserted or (in one case yesterday afternoon) a USB > Ethernet convertor is used (to save a student's work) and then the onboard NIC starts working.

 

We're working through

• Any BIOS setting we missed
• 24H2's power-saving options (NIC sleeping etc)
• Known issues for driver / BIOS release notes
• Event logs on the device
• Whether it happens just for the onboard NIC or whether it can affect all NICs (USB > Ethernet convertor).

 

My suspicion is a an overly-aggressive power-saving setting somewhere, but I'd expect it to be more widespread if that was the case.

[Oaktech]

Couple of things occur to me...

 

Is the cabling/switching OK. Low power standby drops to 10/100 and some switches don't appreciate the re negotiation without a restart of the client

 

Have you tried the downloaded driver from HP? We had similar issues with our USFF elitedesk devices and in the end the driver from HP fixed it - there was a 'green ethernet' setting that had to be turned off for it to resume reliably. 

[ITGuyNW]

What happens if you connect a wifi adapter and connect to wifi? Same issue?

[pete]

38 minutes ago, Oaktech said:

Is the cabling/switching OK. Low power standby drops to 10/100 and some switches don't appreciate the re negotiation without a restart of the client

 

Yes - we've spot-checked PC <> cable <> wall jack <> patch panel <> switch port on the affected devices.  Switches are 2930m and 2930f for the most part.

 

We've had HP desktops (Prodesk 400s and 600s) for a fair while and while they do drop to 10/100, they've never actually turned off the NIC (no lights).  We have 20 of the G6 version of this model that didn't display any problems.  They were running Win10 22H2, however.

 

For drivers we're using OSDCloud, which downloads applicable drivers/firmware as part of the imaging process (OSDCloud+MDT).  I haven't double-checked the versions offered against those on the manual download site yet.

 

@ITGuyNW

Not sure, haven't tested that yet.

[pete]

Tentatively, making the PCs check and update drivers via HP Image Assistant

 

HPImageAssistant.exe /Operation:Analyze /Action:Install /Selection:All /Silent /ReportFolder:C:\IT\HPIA\Logs /SoftpaqDownloadFolder:C:\IT\HPIA\Drivers /BIOSPwdFile:currentpwd.bin

....seems to have prevented occurrences in one room.

 

(and realistically does no harm being pushed out to all the HP desktop kit).

 

I'll leave a link to the Client Management Script library downloads: https://www.hp.com/us-en/solutions/client-management-solutions/download.html

 

https://support.hp.com/in-en/document/ish_7636709-7636753-16

[CALIT2]

Hi Pete so updating the drivers via HP image assistant resolved your issue then? 
I am also having this issue with the G9 minis across our estate. Did you find the causation or just went down to out of date drivers?

[Oaktech]

14 hours ago, CALIT2 said:

Hi Pete so updating the drivers via HP image assistant resolved your issue then? 
I am also having this issue with the G9 minis across our estate. Did you find the causation or just went down to out of date drivers?

I can't speak for the OP, but I started having it again with a couple of fresh built devices last week. I've used the HP support assistant and updated the NIC using on Thursday that and touch-wood it seems to have sorted it over the last few days, where it was happening every few hours. 

[pete]

18 hours ago, CALIT2 said:

Hi Pete so updating the drivers via HP image assistant resolved your issue then? 
I am also having this issue with the G9 minis across our estate. Did you find the causation or just went down to out of date drivers?

Yes - updating to the very latest drivers on all the affected devices (using HP Image Assistant) solved it in all reported cases.

 

It's not clear whether we downloaded an iffy driver release when we prepped for the rollout or if the MDT task sequence missed/failed to install a driver and used a generic instead.

[Lar]

Wound up chasing this down. Re-installed the drivers, but the key seems to be setting the following registry setting:

 

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\WinHTTPAutoProxySvc\Start - set this to a value of 3.

 

Restart.

 

Worked on a couple of different systems for me.

 

 

[PotNoodleTech]

Check they're not running at 100m/s.  Aruba seem to be incapable of managing 100mb/s connections reliabily.

 

If so - Try forcing to 1000 full duplex in the driver settings.