Thursday 12 July 2007

Windows 2003 Service Pack 2 - Intel ProSet teaming broken.

We got called in to a client's location because they could not figure out why their server was no longer connected to anything after a bunch of updates. It turns out that one of the updates was Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2.

After a bit of investigation it was discovered that the adapters were showing that they were part of an adapter team, but there was no team entry in the Network Connections folder.

This is how the setup should look for the Intel ProSet adapter teaming:
LAN Adapter 1 (Connected)
LAN Adapter 2 (Connected)
LANTeam 1 (Connected) in fault tolerance mode.

After Server 2003 SP 2 it looked like:
LAN Adapter 1 (Connected)
LAN Adapter 2 (Connected)

Because it is the LANTeam adapter that has all of the actual network bindings attached to it, the server was throwing all sorts of fits. Active Directory, DNS, WINS, and more were throwing codes left, right, and centre.

To fix it temporarily, we broke the adapter teaming by removing one of the physical adapters from the team, and then set the appropriate static IP settings to it.

We didn't do any updating of the ProSet software for now, as timing was critical for them. They had been down since early that morning when the service pack was applied.

There are no guarantees that when we go back to install the newest ProSet version that the adapter teaming will work as it should either. We will need to test that beforehand!

We are hesitant as far as installing the newest ProSet 11.x. This newest version has been giving us problems with the inability to set the adapters into teaming mode for fault tolerance. This is without W2K Server SP2 on the boxes as they all tend to be SBS based. So, there are no guarantees that this newest version will work with SP 2 either!

The investigation is ongoing! ;)

UPDATE 2007-07-16: We have a Windows Server 2003 Standard R2 box that had version 11.1 of the ProSet installed on it. The Service Pack did not kill the team in this case. However, it did kill access to any of the ProSet tabs when bringing up the NIC's properties via the physical NIC's Configure button.

We will reinstall the original ProSet 11.1 to see if that brings back the tabs and thus the ability to control the Teaming feature. If not, we will install the newest version of ProSet to see if that works.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.

15 comments:

Dennis said...

did you manage to get Intel Proset to work with servicepack 2?

I just installed the utility on a new server deployment and none of the tabs show up. I guess I've got the same issue.

Unfortunately I can't find anything about this issue on the Intel website and there have been no driver updates.

Thanks in advance for your reply.

Philip Elder Cluster MVP said...

To date, the tabs for teaming have not come back.

At this point, all of our servers are production that have this setup. We don't have anything here in the lab that we can blow up, so I am not willing to "test" uninstalling and reinstalling the ProSet drivers.

So far, no amount of trying to reinstall the ProSet drivers have brought the tabs back.

I have seen this behaviour on new SBS installs too. After teaming the adapters in between SBS install phase 1 and 2 the tabs disappear after the final reboot post phase 2.

It is a bit of a stumper.

I do hope that Intel gets their stuff together to work it out.

Philip

Anonymous said...

Aliel B. 8-30-07

We have the same problem. I spent 8 hrs on the phone with Dell support and they weren't able to uninstall the previous version of the Intel Proset after installing SP2. I am not able to make any teaming anymore... I will contact Intel and try to post a solution as soon as I have it. Anyone found one yet?

Philip Elder Cluster MVP said...

At this point, it is not looking too good.

Intel needs to get their stuff together and fix the software.

Philip

Anonymous said...

8-30-07
Aliel
Now intel has the new proset version 12.2 on their website. http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-006120.htm PRO2KXP.EXE
They claim it works with windows 2003 server sp2. I installed it and I am not yet able to launch the utility. It doesn't appear either on the task manager or the task bar.... Any clue why may that be?

Philip Elder Cluster MVP said...

Aliel,

Navigate to your Network Connections folder and bring up the properties on either of the NICs.

Click on the Configure button.

Do you see the Teaming tabs there at all?

You may have to rip out the old Intel ProSet before installing the new.

I have a data server here that SP2 installed on and kept the team, though I am getting lots of Server Offline messages from my XP boxes. I suspect that it is a ProSet/SP2 issue.

So, when things calm down, I will run through uninstalling the existing ProSet, and installing the new one. I will post the results here.

Thanks for letting us know that there is a new version!

Philip

Anonymous said...

Philip,

Thank you. I was able to do the teaming. I used 2 uninstallers recommended by Intel. Here are the names: PROUnins.zip and P3uninst.exe Yo can look them up in the Intel site on the search box. Good luck!

Matt said...

Frustratingly, I seem to have the same issue - despite removing the card and reinstalling with the latest proset drivers (12.2 - its an Intel Pro/1000 MT dual port server card), I cannot see the advanced config tabs in properties/configuration either!

Philip Elder Cluster MVP said...

Did you run the P3uninst.exe utility as indicated by Aliel? It has helped us on a number of occastions to clear things up.

Thanks for that Aliel by the way! :D

However, the one server we need to get back online, teaming or no, is still giving us lots of grief after downloading and running the P3uninst.exe utility from Intel.

12.2 did install and allow us to work with the teaming, but the server is still disappearing on us causing Offline Files messages to appear almost constantly.

At this point, SP2 and the Intel drivers are totally pooched. :(

In this case, we may have no choice but to rebuild and NOT SP2 the box.

Philip

Matt said...

No, I didn't. However, I did get a useful reply from intel:

Please refer to the following URL for information on how to see PROSet tabs in the Device Manager Properties.

http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/CS-020166.htm

This is under the heading of "tabs not visible in terminal services", and solved my problem perfectly - a quick twiddle in dcom config and all is good!

Philip Elder Cluster MVP said...

Excellent!

Grumpy, thanks for finding out the DCom modification to get the tabs back!

Philip

Anonymous said...

Hi,
I've been having the same problem on a TS 2003 R2 X64- the Intel link fixed it.

Thank you,

Simon

Philip Elder Cluster MVP said...

Simon,

I am glad that things worked out for you! :D

And, you are welcome!

Philip

Anonymous said...

Hi Philip and all, thanks for the intel link that showed the dcom fixes, it's definitely the magic required to fix this issue once and for all.

All Star Blogger said...

On my Win2k3 64-bit server, this suggestion worked perfectly, since I was in fact accessing the server via Remote Desktop (mstsc.exe):

http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/CS-020166.htm

Thanks to GRUMPY for that great tip!

Once I made the suggested DCOMCNFG change, the ProSet features were visible here:

Network Connections > Chose adapter properties > General tab > Configure button