MSI K8N Neo2 Plat, bios 1.1 tries to boot from NIC??

[seacoastguy]

I am searching for help on the following issue (text taken form another board). Any insight would be very much appreciated. Also, included are two replies that I feel do not address the issue, as I exlplain in the past portion of my post:

>> I have homed in on my issue re: "invalid partition" problems upon boot. The situation is:

When Bios (K8N Neo2 Plat bios v 1.1) is set to boot from Floppy, then CD, then HDD, AND WITH a CD in (either) drive, I get a good boot into XP Pro SP1.

If there is no CD in either drive, or if the bios is set to boot sequence = floppy, HDD, CD...I get no boot and a message that I have found all over the net but with no real resolution:

"For Realtek RTL81108/8169 Gigabit Ethernet Controller beta v1.00 (030811)

Client MAC ADDR (insert a whole lot of numbers) GUID FFFF....FFFF (insert a whole lot of Fs)

PXE-E53: no boot file name recived
PXE-M0F: Exsiting PXE-ROM
Invalid Partition Table"

Now...what the heck is going on? I have read that this would seem to indicate the bios trying to boot from a network, but none of my bios settings indicate that. I've tried disabling Gigabit Ethernet in bios as well since I'm a home user and 10/100 is plenty, but no impact.

For now, I can just keep a CD in the drive but this is rediculous. Any suggestions? Is this an issue with MSI K8n Neo 2 PLat bios 1.1 or Realtek Ethernet driver (I supposedly have the most recent verison, dated Aug 04) or...???>>

Reply # 1 -- Under the 3'rd boot device there is boot other device. Set that one to disabled.
Reply # 2 -- Likely you have boot sequence set to Floppy, CD, Network, HDD. Change it to read Floppy, CD, HDD-0 ( or whatever boot drive you use), and as [reply # 1] says disable ' boot from other devices'

My subsequent thoughts:

>> I do not have Network, NIC, or any other value setup in my boot sequence. I am not as saavy as many of the people checking these forums, but I can see plainly that my sequence is set: floppy, CD, HDD. As I mentioned in the original problem, if I set to floppy, HDD, CD...I won't boot properly.

When I "disable other boot devices", and do not elect to boot from the CD (see 1st sequence), my start-up sequence just hangs...no boot, system locked. Presumably because it does not know eherer to go, though I do not know why...there's a perfectly good HDD there! ;-)

All this implies to me that my HDD is being ignored during boot...at least initially. Doesn't make sense.>>

Any other thoughts Anandtech experts?? This is getitng pretty frustrating.


Thanks in advance for any input,

Chris

A64 3500+
MSI K8N Neo 2 PLatinum
Zalman 400B PSU
Asus 16x DVD ROM
Plextor 712-A DVR / CDRW
2 GB (4 x 512) Corsair XMS 3200 C2PT
MSI 9800 Pro 128 (recognized as XT)
Audigy 2 ZS
Sony Floppy
Win XP Pro Sp1

 

[imported_RobJ]

Maybe there is some sort of PC networked to your computer that the mobo sees and is trying to boot from. Do you have any other PC's on your network, or do you have any external HD's networked? Do you have an MP3 player connected or anything? Or a USB drive? Lastly, have you tried just putting the HD as the first boot device (not floppy)? I know you shouldn't have to do this, but i was just wondering.

I have the same mobo/proc, with the following components:
1gig OCZ3700EB
WD 160gig HD
etc

But I don't knwo if i have bios 1.1. I never updated my bios, so i assume i have the 1.0. Just so you know, i have not seen these problems, but i did think it was weird that since i have CD drive set as 1st boot device, the system always hangs for a second or two to say "Boot from CD ..." even if there is no cd in the drive. But it does boot when there is no CD there, so i don't have the same problem as you.

One more thought -- i know the mobo has two ethernet's -- have you tried completely disabling one or both of them, just to see if that changes the situation. Or just try unplugging all network cables to see if that lets it boot?

I'm no expert, but i'm trying to give you some suggestions.