PC will not power on with NIC installed

MrJT · ‎10-01-2019

I'm attempting to install a new network card in my PC, and I'm having an issue where it will not even power on with the card installed. As soon as I remove the card, it powers up again with no issue. With the card installed and the power connected, the green power light on the board comes on and a high pitched humming can be heard from the system. Pressing the power button has no effect. No lights, no beeps, no fans, nothing.

I've tried disabling PCIe power management and network boot as well as the SMbus electrical tape hack others have mentioned, but there was no change. I installed the card successfully in a different PC and updated to the newest firmware, but nothing changed after that either. I attempted to update the BIOS on my HP PC, but it already seems to be using a newer version than is on the site, and network update can't find any files (is ftp.hp.com/pub/pcbios still used?).

The new card I'm attempting to install is an Intel i350 dual gigabit card. The specific model of the card is Dell XP0NY. The board number for my system is 18E7, and the currently installed BIOS version is L01 v02.75

Grzwacz · ‎10-01-2019

Greetings,

Welcome to the forum.

I am not a HP employee.

The only thing I could suggest is disabling Secure boot (Link) and enabling Legacy support in the BIOS before you install the NIC.

It is strange to see you have a BIOS version which HP does not list in the Revision History at this site (Link).

Regards

MrJT · ‎10-01-2019

Thanks!

Secure boot has been disabled, and I have tried booting with legacy enabled. The board doesn't even get to the point of powering up, so I feel like the issue is something more fundamental. Maybe a power limit on the PCIe slot or a PCIe revision issue? I read that PCIe should be backwards compatible, but the card is PCIe 2.1, and the board only supports 2.0 as far as I can tell.

It sounds like HP released version 2.75 a while back but have since removed it. I can only assume there was an issue with that version. I tried to manually install 2.71 via the BIOS flash option and the DOS flash utility, and it just tells me the image is incompatible. Is there a more forceful method of overwriting the newer BIOS? I'm also concerned that my Intel ME version is only 9.0.20 while the BIOS revision history lists an update to 9.1.20 a while ago.

EDIT: Disregard the part about the Intel ME version. I successfully upgraded it to 9.1.45, but the situation with the NIC is not improved

Grzwacz · ‎10-01-2019

Hi MrJT,

You have good thoughts on possible causes.

I don't know what else to suggest.

HP may lock out BIOS downgrades on some systems.

I had an old Packard Bell PC that would not run when I installed a 56K US Robotic modem.

Never solved the problem.

Regards