Sharing an experience involving intel Ethernet driver

[Vocaleyes]

Howdy.

As usual I’ll try to keep this short and to the point, I have noticed that the intel 1219 driver I was using (2021) would cause a critical failure of the driver and then subsequently the system. This also affects bios.

From what I have observed, this only happens when downloading a game.

What would happen, is a download would begin (possibly limited to games using easy anti cheat? POSSIBLY) part way through the download, consistently, the Ethernet would essentially turn its self off. Meaning the connected icon in the tray would turn into the no connectey globe. When troubleshoot is selected the message “Ethernet cable is not plugged in” would display.

So of course a reboot is needed.

Upon reboot, the bios screen would show an error message, offering the options of “load last know stable config, load defaults” etc. usually this would indicate an issue with bios settings themselves, which was obviously the first thought. But when it continually happened on default bios settings, highlighted that this issue wasn’t caused by bios, but was affecting it.


After a reboot and skipping past that bios error screen, Ethernet driver would return and function as usual, until once again a Download began.

This happened 10/10 times.


I then proceeded to update the driver to a 2022 version which resolved this issue.


The point of this story? Is to simply highlight the effect 1 bad driver can have no only on an OS, but on the entirety of a system.

[ISkyder]

try disabling the MSI mod via MSI_util, there is no lateral scaling on the I219V because of this, I have a bad registration in games, disabling the MSI mode the connection becomes stable, I also recommend increasing the transfer and reception buffers, which will also affect better network performance, but know that the receive buffer should be less than the transfer buffer.

[d-unknown]

I also recommend increasing the transfer and reception buffers, which will also affect better network performance, but know that the receive buffer should be less than the transfer buffer.

buffering adds delay, why would you increase buffers, it's highly recommended to lower the transmit/receive buffers as low as possible

too low values will cause packet loss

[ZINZIRIO]

I also recommend increasing the transfer and reception buffers, which will also affect better network performance, but know that the receive buffer should be less than the transfer buffer.

buffering adds delay, why would you increase buffers, it's highly recommended to lower the transmit/receive buffers as low as possible

too low values will cause packet loss

What values do you use?

[Vocaleyes]

try disabling the MSI mod via MSI_util, there is no lateral scaling on the I219V because of this, I have a bad registration in games, disabling the MSI mode the connection becomes stable, I also recommend increasing the transfer and reception buffers, which will also affect better network performance, but know that the receive buffer should be less than the transfer buffer.

UPDATE: Firstly this Isn't limited to EAC Games, nor is it limited to the 2021 driver. This issue happens when any large download is in progress. (albeit less frequently on the 22 driver than the 21)
So seeing as I always have MSI util installed, I took it off interrupts, which didn't alleviate the issue.. HOWEVER, your recommendation of altering the receive and transmit buffers has fixed the issue entirely. I have downloaded 3 different games twice to confirm, being diablo, the finals and valorant.

I also then altered the buffer values to their lowers number to re-test, immediately after doing so and attempting another download, the driver hard crashed and sent me to bios error screen.

So, with that info, what could be the cause for this issue? Is this faulty port, driver or other?

[d-unknown]

I also recommend increasing the transfer and reception buffers, which will also affect better network performance, but know that the receive buffer should be less than the transfer buffer.

buffering adds delay, why would you increase buffers, it's highly recommended to lower the transmit/receive buffers as low as possible

too low values will cause packet loss

What values do you use?

1024/512 and i can go as low as 64/32 and it doens't make difference for me, but some claims that low values highly improve hitreg

look at this : https://rejzor.wordpress.com/2015/12/07 ... for-games/

[Vocaleyes]

It happened again under slightly different circumstances, so I made a video and took a screenshot highlighting the issue further.

Video - https://youtu.be/sPXND8wk4zw?feature=shared

Please see attached image for BIOS screen error.

My next step is to install a new 25M CaT6 cable to see if that resolves. (Spoilers, new cable didn’t resolve) am stumped for now..