Spare ethernet card prevents thin client from booting

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Mon, 07 Jul 2008, Dan Moore wrote:

> I have two ethernet cards in a machine that dual boots into Windows and a
> Hardy Heron thin client.  When I disconnect the cable from ethernet card
> that is plugged into a PCI slot, and boot LTS from the motherboard's NIC,
> the machine can't boot.  If I remove the PCI ethernet card, everything
> works.  

I have seen this occasionally on machines with two ethernet cards.  My
guess is that you are PXE booting on interface A and then interface B
becomes eth0 so the machine tries to contact the server on interface B
which is not on that network.

I presume the PCI ethernet card is PXE bootable but the motherboard one
isn't.  Is that why you have two cards in there in the first place?

The solution for me was to go into the BIOS and disable the onboard NIC.
I'm not certain every BIOS will allow that, but it's likely.  Does Windows
need two network cards?

Gavin