BSRdr

On a side note, got a sucessful RIS preload today on a D975XBX board that uses a Pro 1000 PL chipset. I've got to do some digging and come up with a Pro 1000M batch to check your issues more thoroughly.

I didn't realize it either till I started bumping into it. As a very long time intel partner, I have to say the QA in the last year has gone downhill by 50%. I've actually had to resort to serious browbeating including conference calls with Tech Reps and even the heads of platforms to get them to release a TA on the SR1425 server platform as an example that they had held for months regarding the actual server not booting when a particular group of circumstances take place. They claimed sub 1%, honestly I say it was closer to 10%....

I don't need to have a reason to RMA an Intel product, they are very good about that with partners. However this issue seems to only effect RIS preloads; as such machines that fail the RIS load can still be imaged via PE for example. The timing issue, if indeed that's what it is, is what I am trying to flesh out more before reporting it back to my intel tech sales rep inside. Failing that I can work with quadsupport to flesh it out further, but it takes time, and I am a bit short of that these days. This isn't dramatically different then say BOXD845GVSRL which had a somewhat similar issue with RIS however in that case just under 5% of the last batch revision would refuse to get DHCP during RIS. Again an issue only during RIS preloads, no where else was it a factor. Very strange none the less.... That is a very good question on editing those timings, I will have to dig into the ROM options to see. However bottom line when identically configured hardware exists, they should behave identically... These do not, hence a design of manufacturing flaw exists in the 945G series.

Sorry I guess I wasn't specific enough, I have done this load sucessfully on this board (BOXD945GTP - all 3 flavors) using 10.2 via RIS preload from a 2003 RIS server. However 5-15% of the boards that are otherwise identically configured WILL NOT load from the server. However I have a stack of PCIe 1000 PT Nics I can do further testing with tomorrow if you would like...

You may want to test this on one or two more of your machines, especially if your install is going down just prior to hard drive partitioning. I've seen this commonly on the Intel 945 boards. You can use 10.2 drivers and it should work fine. What I've noted is somewhere between 5-15% of these boards will not RIS boot, I believe it to be a fault with the onboard nic timings, I'm still fleshing it out before forwarding it to my inside rep at Intel. However I'd guess if you just try a few more of your boards you will find it works fine with 10.2....