Network naming issue...

[Airbozo]

Not sure if anyone will know where to start on this, but I am open to suggestions.

Here is the scenario;

We build systems for a custy using their pre-built O/S image made with Acronis. Same image every time and we have done about 50 or so of these systems. Same parts, same bios/firmware, etc.

Yesterday one of my techs noticed that on the system he was building, once the OS image loaded and he went to the network properties, the 2 network ports did not have any names (usually they have specified names after the image is loaded based on what we named them when the image was created).

To top things off, the network ports were now numbered 5 and 6 instead of the 3 and 4 we expected (this is usually because windows does not delete network adapters from the device table and 1 and 2 were the NICs with the OLD firmware).

This has got me stumped. I even tried some tricks I know to show the non existent hardware in the device manager and uninstalled them.

Any idea's?

[Drum Thumper]

Obviously the first thing to do is to make sure everything is seated properly. Something's telling me you did that already. After that, I'd check to make sure the BIOS hadn't got tweaked somehow (stranger things have happened).

Is it possible to replicate this on another system? Could also be a bad board(s). That is what I'm leaning towards if it cannot be replicated on another system.

[Airbozo]

FYI on the solution.

Windows numbers the connection based on the model and rev. So for instance, we created the original XP image using an older rev of the motherboard with an older bios. When installing that image on a new motherboard (same model), instead of getting network connection 1 and 2, we got 3 and 4. As expected. So we created a new image based on the new rev and bios and a few other parts that had changed rev (dvd drive, and a few data capture cards).

The problem I had was that when I loaded the image I got connections 5 and 6. That tipped me off that something was wrong (and broke the process so I could not finish). So it turns out SuperMicro sent us 2 boards that had the correct bios and model number on the board, but in fact they were NOT the model that was indicated by the label. Even though they were basically the same (exact same network HW), windows saw the network ports as 2 different ones than were ever present on the system. We swapped the boards out with the correct ones and everything works fine.

[Drum Thumper]

So it turns out SuperMicro sent us 2 boards that had the correct bios and model number on the board, but in fact they were NOT the model that was indicated by the label.

So, in other words, they were labeled wrong? /facepalm

Nice detective work.