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2008 R2 NIC driver for 82579V?

idata
Employee
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Greetings,

I have a Intel DH67CL desktop board running Windows Server 2008 R2 HyperV,

My problem is that intel doesn't support the 82579V NIC on 2008 R2, the driver installation states that no supported adapters exist in the system.

However...I am able to force the use of the 82579LM driver instead, and it seems to work allright, but is it "safe" to use this driver.....is it compatible enough to rely on, or should i purchase a PCI NIC and forget about the onboard one for production alltogether?

Maybe there is another driver that suits the NIC better than the LM driver....clearly i dont know the difference between V and LM.

Since it's a desktop board, not intended/designed for servers, do you think a supported driver will be available any time soon, or ever?

Windows7 x64 is supported and works fine btw.

best regards

Kasper

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idata
Employee
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BTW, after manually installing the LM driver via Device Manager, i can successfully install the PROWin7_64_v16.2 package...it doesnt change the driver to the "correct" 82579V version, but atleast the advanced driver functionality is there now and the NIC seems stable.

Does anyone know the difference between 82579V and 82579LM? It seems the LM versions are somewhat common in laptops.

Another question....are there any bennefits running a PCIe NIC over an "old" PCI gigabit NIC on a home gigabit network?

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Mark_H_Intel
Employee
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Hi Kasper,

Let me see if I can help with some of your questions.

Is it "safe" to use this driver.....is it compatible enough to rely on, or should i purchase a PCI NIC and forget about the onboard one for production alltogether?

The answer depends on how you define safe. The 82579V was never intended for server platforms and was not validated with any Windows Server operating system. Usually extensive testing is performed on Intel(R) Ethernet devices with each operating system. In the case of the 82579V, that testing was not performed. Therefore, you are on your own to test and decide on the suitability of using the 82579V in your server setup.

Since it's a desktop board, not intended/designed for servers, do you think a supported driver will be available any time soon, or ever?

I do know that no supported driver for Windows Server 2008 R2 is planned for the 82579V, so you definitley will not see a supported driver anytime soon and are unlikely to ever see a supported driver.

Does anyone know the difference between 82579V and 82579LM? As you have already seen, the 82579LM has been tested with server operating systems. In the datasheet, you will see that the 82579LM supports additional features with the appropriate chipset components. The http://www.intel.com/products/ethernet/resource.htm# s1=all&s2=82579LM/V&s3=all datasheet and spec update have the technical details.

Another question....are there any bennefits running a PCIe NIC over an "old" PCI gigabit NIC on a home gigabit network?

The physical link speed will be the same, but the PCIe bus is a newer design that might help with potential bottlenecks or conflicts in the system as a whole. In general, the adapters using PCIe are newer designs that may use less power and probably have more time before they are discontinued. If I were buying a NIC for my desktop, I would prefer a PCIe NIC. However, I would not expect to see a noticeable improvement on my network performance on my home network just because I got a PCIe NIC.

I hope my comments are helpful to you in making your decisions on what to do.

Mark H

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idata
Employee
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Hi Mark H,

Thanks a lot for your reply, im sure other HyperV users will find your post interesting, and maybe consider purchasing a supported PCIe card.

I went througt the spec sheets, but i couldnt find any mentioning of the differences between the V and LM versions until i realized that the V versions "Device ID" is 1503. (that could be a lot clearer from the documents though, since that's only mentioned in the updated spec sheet, so i had to go back and forth to figure it out, since they didnt bother calling it V, but just refer to it as 82579LM x1503)

For those interrested, this is what the V version lacks, (it wouldn't be completely wrong to refer to it as the "Desktop Embedded Consumer version of LM")

1. No Server operating system supported drivers

2. Intel Virtualization Driver

3. MACsec (802.3ae) (Platform)

4. ISCSI boot (BIOS)

5. Intel vPro (FW)

...with the LM driver forced on, and the PROWin7_64_v16.2 package installed afterwards, both 1. Server OS Drivers and 2. Virtualization works just fine, albeit not being officially supported, atleast I feel a lot more confident using the LM driver now than i did before.

br Kasper

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idata
Employee
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Hi Herngaard:

I have the same exact problem with NIC 82579V and 2008 R2. I've been looking for driver for NIC 82579LM but I couldn't find it.

Could you be so kind to send me the NIC driver you're using for your 82579V NIC? Or could you tell me what do I have to do in order to get the 82579V working?

Thanks a lot in advance.

Xavier

idata
Employee
11,161 Views

Hi xmorales.

Download and extract the intel pro winx64 installer package with winrar.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/confirm.aspx?httpDown=http://downloadmirror.intel.com/18725/eng/PROWinx64.exe&lang=eng&Dwnldid=18725&DownloadType=Drivers&ProductID=3299&ProductFamily=Ethernet+Components&ProductLine=Ethernet+Controllers&ProductProduct=Intel®+82579+Gigabit+Ethernet+Controller http://downloadcenter.intel.com/confirm.aspx?httpDown=http://downloadmirror.intel.com/18725/eng/PROWinx64.exe&lang=eng&Dwnldid=18725&DownloadType=Drivers&ProductID=3299&ProductFamily=Ethernet+Components&ProductLine=Ethernet+Controllers&ProductProduct=Intel®+82579+Gigabit+Ethernet+Controller

Instead of running the installer, you should (from device manager) browse to the extracted \PROWin7_64_v16.2\PRO1000\Winx64\NDIS62 folder and choose the driver for 82579LM (ignore the warnings)

After you get the NIC running, run the installer to get all the driver options added to the driver settings.

Hope this helps you.

Br Herngaard

idata
Employee
11,161 Views

When I open the Folder NDIS62, How do I know which file is the 82579LM?

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MJohn26
New Contributor I
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I am in the same boat. I bought an Intel DP67BG to use for Windows Home Server 2011, but the NIC isn't support. I extracted the files and when I get to the NDIS62 folder, it has several different drivers listed together. I seen by looking at e1c62x64 setup file with notepad it listed 82579LM chip, but I can't select it from Device Manager. I tried to copy all the e1c62x64 files to a new folder, but it says it couldn't find driver software.

What files would I need to copy to the new folder, or how do I manually get the driver loaded.

Thanks for any help

-=Mark=-

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idata
Employee
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Open devicemanager -> right click and select "update driver" -> Select "browse my computer.." -> Select "let me pick..." -> click "have disk.." and browse. In the list you will find it

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idata
Employee
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somebody having same problem, I suggest to see this thread: /thread/20667 http://communities.intel.com/thread/20667

Regards

Martin

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