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    X201 + NIC Expresscard == wont boot, recommendations

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by filmbuff, Feb 28, 2012.

  1. filmbuff

    filmbuff Notebook Consultant

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    Hi, all.

    I needed to add more GigE ports to my x201 (for VMWare) and recently purchased a Startech EC2000S dual NIC Expresscard (uses a Realtek chipset). The problem is that the laptop won’t boot when the card is plugged in – the system freezes at the Thinkpad logo. The only way to get this combo to work is if I pull the card out during the POST and plug in the card after the OS loads.

    I’ve tried changing various BIOS settings including: setting PCI interrupts to Automatic (the default is 11), disabling the PCI Express Active-State Power Management, disabling anything related to the network card and bootup, etc.

    I am not running the latest BIOS which is dated Dec-2011, but am on a fairly recent version which was updated in Q1-2011 and after reading the release notes, I’m not too optimistic that upgrading the BIOS will help for my case. (I’ll try the BIOS upgrade this weekend anyway.)

    I did some Googling and found a thread on Lenovo’s Thinkpad forum with a similar issue – T420 not booting with a eSATA Expresscard, but nothing in there about whether the poster found a solution.

    I was hoping for two things:

    1) Does anyone have any ideas on what else I can try to get this hardware combo to successfully boot while the card is plugged in?

    2) Does anyone have any experience or recommendations with compatible GigE Expresscards that will work with the X201 (single or dual NICs)?

    Thanks.
     
    filmbuff, Feb 28, 2012
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  2. bogatyr

    bogatyr Notebook Evangelist

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    Depending on your network hardware, you could just use a single NIC and setup VLANs. VMWare and the Intel driver both support VLAN assignments.
     
    bogatyr, Feb 29, 2012
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  3. filmbuff

    filmbuff Notebook Consultant

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    That's an idea but I'd prefer to allocate a second NIC to the VM traffic so I can get better performance. Some of the VMs may push a fair amount of data over the connection to my newly acquired NAS.

    I can't be the only X201 owner out there who's needed to add more GigE connectivity, am I? What kinda cards are others using?

    PS. Updated the BIOS last night...didn't help and I've confirmed that the card does work in my X200 and X200s.
     
    filmbuff, Mar 1, 2012
    #3