Empty MAC address... DHCP refusing to lease IP for RIS

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This seems to be somewhat related to this topic..

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/networks/4812-ris-guid-problems-2.html

 

... but rather than the GUID being the issue, I've got two Stone PC's that have empty MAC addresses ie: 00:00:00:00:00:00

 

For whatever reason that's affecting my ability to get it to connect to a DHCP server and circumspectly, to get it to deploy a RIS image...

 

Anyone come across this before and/or got any suggestions for ways to solve this?

[sted]

i think (and it was 7+ years ago) i ahd a similar issue with an asus board dont know about in ris but i just added a mac address to it in windows on the nics device manager properties page. Id be tempted to look for a bios flash

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Seems I may have found the solution myself..

 

I allowed the stone installed WinXP to complete the basic prep then jump into the advanced settings of the NIC and set the "hardware address" with a random hex string.

 

Rebooted and it now sees the RIS server and is installing at long last...

 

 

EDIT: Spoke too soon... Seems the process of RISing is wiping the MAC and I'm back at square sodding #1 again... BIOS is looking decidedly like it's the way forward...

[Andrew_Sharrad]

Hi there - if you havent sorted this issue, contact Stone support please and I'm sure they will sort it for you, either by a BIOS upgrade or motherboard replacement (if under warranty).

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Hi there - if you havent sorted this issue, contact Stone support please and I'm sure they will sort it for you, either by a BIOS upgrade or motherboard replacement (if under warranty).

 

Hi Andrew,

 

Thanks for reminding me about this thread... Turned out the problem was my RIS install had old versions of the network drivers... Once I'd updated them in the i386 and oem/$1/nic directories it worked fine.

 

I'm guessing it's a quirk of the nic chips that they allow MAC spoofing or setting that isn't supported by the older drivers so that was what was wiping them.

 

So, Stone, off the hook... mea culpa.