[ipxe-devel] [Etherboot-discuss] Windows installation is bound to single NIC

[Michael Brown]

On Thursday 03 Mar 2011 09:35:43 David Woodward wrote:
> I'm having an issue with a Windows 7 SP1 (x86) installation that I
>  installed directly to an iSCSI target.  The system has three NICs in it
>  but it appears that Windows has developed an unhealthy attachment to the
>  one it used during install.  gPXE/Etherboot will use any of the cards to
>  boot up, but once Windows gets to the part where it should take over the
>  system just reboots.

Probably only the install-time card is marked as boot-start.  The easiest way 
to mark all cards as boot-start is to install sanbootconf:

  http://git.ipxe.org/release/sanbootconf/sanbootconf-latest.zip

> On a related note, what is the recommended way to get more bandwidth to the
> iSCSI target using gPXE and Windows 7?  MPIO and MCS appear to be disabled
> and/or unsupported.

iPXE doesn't support MPIO/MCS, but the Windows initiator should support them.  
On earlier versions, I seem to remember MPIO being an option that had to be 
enabled at the time of installing the iSCSI initiator; not sure how that will 
map to Windows 7, where it's pre-installed.

BTW,  please consider upgrading to iPXE (http://ipxe.org), since it is 
actively maintained.

Michael