I was going to make a UDP joke, but didn't think you'd get it.

December 1, 2011 1:29 PM

Can you help me find a DOS driver for this motherboard's NIC?

I'm trying to image a large number of workstations containing the Intel D945GSEJT (Johnstown) motherboard. In order to do this over the network with Norton Ghost, I need the DOS driver for the network interface, but I can't find it anywhere on Intel's site.

Any ideas where else I can search?

The description simply says this about the NIC: Realtek 10/100/1000 Ethernet Controller*

... but that's a little vague.

posted by siclik to computers & internet (7 answers total)

Have you looked on Crynwr's site?
posted by rmd1023 at 1:45 PM on December 1, 2011

According to the spec sheet, this board has a Realtek 8111D Gigabit Ethernet Controller. Intel doesn't provide a DOS driver, but Realtek has a generic one (scroll down to DOS section) that seems like it'll do the job.
posted by tracert at 2:12 PM on December 1, 2011

PS clonezilla is better
posted by tracert at 2:14 PM on December 1, 2011

I tried installing that generic driver, but it didn't seem to like that (complained that the adapter was not found).

Is there another way to determine exactly what Ethernet controller is on this board? Could it be different from the spec sheet?
posted by siclik at 2:32 PM on December 1, 2011

Boot into a Linux distro (live cd, usb, PXE, what have you) and run lshw.

Just guessing, but probably the spec sheet is correct. I bet you're running into difficulties because the Realtek 8111D is a PCI-E part, or PC DOS doesn't like the IO controller (Intel ICH7-M), something like this. Maybe out of luck with the software you've got.

Kind of serious about the Clonezilla suggestion now. That or a newer version of Ghost which'll use WinPE instead of DOS.
posted by tracert at 3:19 PM on December 1, 2011

Network drivers in DOS are complicated. If memory serves, you need to have a device in the config.sys file and then also run the .exe from the batch file. I think.

I don't think PCIe is a problem per se, since all that is really needed is an interrupt and a memory location. But the system board might assign the card an interrupt higher than 15 or a memory location outside of DOS's 1024kb addressable space. This might be configurable in BIOS. Could be as simple as telling it that your OS is not plug and play. (Which DOS isn't.)

I would suggest using winpe and a 32 bit version of ghost. (If memory serves, 8.2 is 32 bit.) It is very possible that you can find a Bart's PE that has a version of Ghost that will work.

Alternate process: set up a USB drive (flash or HDD) to be a DOS boot disk. Copy your image and ghost.exe onto there and using the boot menu during POST to boot to the flash drive.

Complications: ghost versions old enough to run on DOS almost for sure don't understand the newer versions of NTFS. You will be able to image the machines, but will need to then boot up with a rescue disk and fix the bootup process.

ImageX is a Microsoft imaging product that seems to work well, and is free for download if you have the right version of Windows. (I think it's anything but the "basic" versions.) I think it's bundled in some kind of deployment kit.
posted by gjc at 4:37 PM on December 1, 2011

We gave up on DOS based ghost awhile back (and more recently with Windows 7, ghost altogether and are now using imagex and WDS via SCCM). If you're not tied to floppy disks, make a PE cd instead and run ghost32.exe within it...works like a charm.

If you don't have a standard PE CD (or if building one looks daunting), these are handy alternatives:
- BartPE
- UBCD4Win

Feel free to memail me if you need any assistance using the PEBuilder.
posted by samsara at 6:45 AM on December 2, 2011