R8169 and Lenovo ThinkPad L530

[Doug Bissett]

I got a new Lenovo ThinkPad L530. It has a Realtek "Device 8168h RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller in it" (from PCI.EXE). I tried Multimac from r8169-0.2.1.wpi. It loads okay, and most of the time, it will get an address from my router, using DHCP. However if I actually try to use it, the machine hangs hard. The only option is to force a power off. I also tried the older multimac driver (R8110), but it hung hard when the driver loaded. I then tried two GENMAC drivers, with no success. The driver from rtgnda13.zip does work, but seems to have a couple of minor problems. Of course, it works perfectly in Win7 Pro 64.

By "actually try to use it", I mean: I loaded Firefox (10.0.12esr), which has a home page of a file on my system. As soon as I try to go to a URL on the internet, I see the Pulse widget indicate about 60% IRQ load. That lasts for about 5 seconds, then the machine is locked. The mouse won't even move. The only way out is forced power off. I also, eventually, see the 60% IRQ load, if I just let the machine sit idle (probably the router doing something), followed shortly by the hard hang.

I traced the operation on my router, but all it shows is the initial connection, which succeeded.

I loaded the TRACE R8169 driver, but since the machine is locked, I can do nothing with it. I did take a trace after a reboot, without actually trying to use the network interface (not sure if it will help).

PCI.EXE output is in L530.txt. I included the whole thing, since this is a relatively new machine, with UEFI BIOS.

Trace output is in L530_10EC_8168.ftf.

Probably useless information: I did find a hit (that I can't find again) that sounds exactly the same in SUSE linux. It mentioned that UBUNTU linux does NOT have the problem.

[Doug Bissett]

I had to ZIP L530_10EC_8168.ftf. It is in L530_8168_trace.zip​.

[Doug Bissett]

I will add some new information, without supporting documentation (which I can supply, if you think it will help):

I took the 8169 card out of my main machine, and tried the on board Realtek 8168. It works with the r8169 2.1 driver. It "dies" with the r8110 driver (which was the original problem which caused me to get the plug in card - at the time, I never thought of doing a complete power off). A complete power off is required to recover from the problem that apparently disables the interface (effectively the same as pulling the ethernet cable). Even windows won't turn it back on. This one also does not work with the RTGNDA driver.

I then replaced a plug in Realtek 8139 card, in my old Gigabyte motherboard, with 800 mhz Athlon processor, with the plug in 8169. If I try r8110, or r8169, it disables the interface, and requires a complete power off (pull the plug) to get it to work again. It does work with RTGNDA (which did not work in the other machine). One new problem, on the gigabyte machine, is that I cannot turn it off when using eCS. Even holding the power button for more than 4 seconds, does not power it off. Windows, of course, powers off with no trouble.

VERY strange...