{"id":1655,"date":"2010-03-10T19:33:27","date_gmt":"2010-03-10T19:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1655"},"modified":"2010-03-10T22:12:17","modified_gmt":"2010-03-10T22:12:17","slug":"windows-server-2008-r2-hyper-v-crash-turns-out-to-be-an-intel-driver-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markwilson.co.uk\/blog\/2010\/03\/windows-server-2008-r2-hyper-v-crash-turns-out-to-be-an-intel-driver-issue.htm","title":{"rendered":"Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V crash turns out to be an Intel driver issue"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago, I rebuilt a recently decommissioned server to run as an infrastructure test and development rig at home.\u00c2\u00a0 I installed Windows Server 2008 R2, enabled the Hyper-V role and all was good until I started to configure my networks, during which I experienced a “blue screen of death” (BSOD) – never a good thing on your virtualisation host, especially when it does the same thing again on reboot:<\/p>\n

“Oh dear, my freshly built Windows Server 2008 R2 machine has just thrown 3 BSODs in a row… after running normally for an hour or so :-(“<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The server is a Dell PowerEdge 840 (a small, workgroup server that I bought a\u00c2\u00a0couple of\u00c2\u00a0years ago<\/a>) with 8GB RAM and a quad core Xeon CPU.\u00c2\u00a0 The hardware is nothing special – but fine for my infrastructure testing – and it had\u00c2\u00a0been running with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V since new (with no issues) but this was the first time I’d tried R2.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

I have 3 network adapters in the server: a built in Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit card (which I’ve reserved for remote access); and 2 Intel PRO\/100s (for VM workloads).\u00c2\u00a0 Ideally I’d use Gigabit Ethernet cards for the VM workload too, but this is only my home network and they were what I had available!<\/p>\n

Trying to find out the cause of the problem, I ran WhoCrashed<\/a>, which gave me the following information:<\/p>\n

This was likely caused by the following module: efe5b32e.sys
\nBugcheck code: 0xD1 (0x0, 0x2, 0x0, 0xFFFFF88002C4A3F1)
\nError: DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
\nDump file: C:\\Windows\\Minidump\\020410-15397-01.dmp
\nfile path: C:\\Windows\\system32\\drivers\\efe5b32e.sys
\nproduct: Intel(R) PRO\/100 Adapter
\ncompany: Intel Corporation
\ndescription: Intel(R) PRO\/100 Adapter NDIS 5.1 driver<\/em><\/p>\n

That confirmed that the issue was with the Intel NIC driver, which sounded right as, after enabling the Hyper-V role, I connected an Ethernet cable to one of the Intel NICs and got a BSOD each time the server came up. If I disconnected the cable, no BSOD.\u00c2\u00a0 Back to the twitters:<\/p>\n

“Does anyone know of any problems with Intel NICs and Hyper-V R2 (that might cause a BSOD)?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I switched the in-box (Microsoft) drivers for some (older) Intel ones.\u00c2\u00a0 That didn’t fix things, so I switched back to the latest drivers.\u00c2\u00a0 Eventually I found that the issue was caused by the checkbox for “Allow management operating system to share this network adapter” and that,\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0if the NIC is live and I selected this, I could reproduce the error:<\/p>\n

“Found the source of yesterday’s WS08R2 Hyper-V crash… any idea why enabling this option http:\/\/twitpic.com\/11b64y<\/a> would trip a BSOD?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even though I could work around the issue (because I don’t want to share a NIC between the parent partition and the children anyway\u00c2\u00a0– I have the Broadcom NIC for remote access) it seemed strange that this behaviour should occur.\u00c2\u00a0 There was no NIC teaming involved and the server was still a straightforward UK installation (aside from enabling Hyper-V and setting up virtual networks).\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Based on suggestions from other Virtual Machine MVPs I also:<\/p>\n