Intel 82576 Dual Port Driver on Windows Server 2012 R2

[RGree6]

Hi all,

Having a bit of a problem currently with a Windows Server 2012 R2 system which is blue screening on a bi-daily, sometimes daily basis. The BSODs appear to be occurring when there is heavy network I/O and from reviewing the Small Kernel Dump (Minidump) files, there is a regular pattern of NdisImPlatform.sys and Ndis.sys being reported as the faulting module.

The server has a Supermicro X8DTH-6F motherboard with dual 82576 gigabit adapters on-board. Currently the server is running with the network driver which was downloaded via Windows Update, a WHQL signed Microsoft driver version 12.6.47.1 and viewing the Driver Files section in Device Manager, it is using an underlying driver file from Intel, e1i63x64.sys with a file version of 12.6.47.0.

I know that the version 12.x family of driver is pretty old so I have visited the Intel Download Center to download a later driver and the latest version available from the Download Center is 19.5. From the Supermicro website on the motherboard downloads page, they are advertising 19.4 for download.

Having tried both of these 19.5 and 19.4 driver bundles, if I use the Setup.exe to try and complete the installation naturally, they both report no Intel(R) Adapters present in the system. If I try to update the driver manually using Device Manager, in both instances it reports that the Windows Update driver is the best available driver.

I have explored the unzipped structure of the download bundle and I can see that there is no driver which references the 82576 in the NDIS64 Windows Server 2012 R2 directory, but there is a driver in the NDIS63 Windows Server 2012 folder which references the 82576.

Should I update the driver via Device Manager using the Have Disk option and forcibly select the 19.5 NDIS63 driver or is there a different bundle which will contain a Windows Server 2012 R2 NDIS64 driver for this chipset? I cannot personally see that there is going to be much, if any difference between the NDIS63 and the NDIS64 driver and given that the R2 release of Windows Server is just that, an R2 release and not a completely new operating system version, the differences in the OS should not be great enough to prevent the installation?

[RGree6]

No thoughts from anyone?

To add further insult to injury, it appears that the Virtual Function Driver for the 82576 chipset to support SR-IOV in a Hyper-V VM exists in the NDIS64 driver but not the driver for the actual 82576 network adapter - Seems a bit daft to me that there is a driver for the virtual function for SR-IOV but not the adapter itself.