No reboot for this lost weekend
The Age
Thursday September 3, 2009
Intel needs to rethink some practices, writes Charles Wright. LIKE most of our computer disasters, our most recent debacle began on a Friday evening, just in time to arrest those feelings of self-indulgent aimlessness we are told some experience as they look forward to a weekend of relaxation.While other people headed to the pub, we were on the phone to the receptionist at the spouse's small business, receiving the news that her computer couldn't access the network.We fired up the LogMeIn IT Reach remote-access program and confirmed that, sure enough, her computer was not online.We remember passing dozens of smiling, pubward-bound individuals as we rode the Bleeding Edge motor scooter to the office, where we clambered under the reception desk yet again. What we discovered down there, in the now-familiar dark zones, was that the LED light on the onboard network adapter was unlit, which is never a good sign.Unfortunately, the ingenuity of Windows developers makes it difficult to be conclusive. The Device Manager assured us that, despite the absence of a light, the network card was working but all our efforts at troubleshooting, including checking that onboard networking was enabled in the BIOS, swapping cables, trying to get some sense out of the IPCONFIG/ALL command and pinging the router etc, indicated the contrary. We concluded that the Asus motherboard had had a terminal falling-out with the network adapter.As a consequence, that Saturday morning did not find us lying in bed. We were standing, instead, in a queue at Computer Parts Land in West Melbourne, inquiring about the price of an Intel PRO/1000 GT gigabit PCI-e network card.Intel's NICs (Network Interface Cards) are not cheap but the $59 Computer Parts Land required before supplying one to us represented a worthwhile investment at a time when gigabit performance is increasingly becoming the networking standard.Unfortunately, while we can't fault the engineering, our experience suggests some of Intel's practices could do with a rethink. Actually installing the hardware was relatively easy. You slide off the side of the case, puzzle for a while over the curious venting that bars access to the motherboard slots, remove as much dust as possible, then pull out the blank bracket, push the card firmly into the slot, insert the screw into the bracket and put everything back again.It's only when you start it up again that you realise that Intel doesn't include any software and Windows doesn't install it automatically. For most components, that's not an issue. You just download the drivers. In the case of a network card, however, you need the driver to access the internet.In our case, it was a minor inconvenience because we had several networked PCs available but it still represented an unnecessary irritation.Far worse was to follow. After we'd installed the software, the PC was quickly back on the network. On Monday morning, however, we got another call from the receptionist.The computer would not boot. She'd tried to start it twice and the message she received was "No bootable device €” insert boot disk and press any key".We were quickly back on the motor scooter and under the desk but we had no better luck. We went into the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System), which essentially tells a PC what it is but it didn't detect any hard drives.We leapt to the obvious conclusion: the hard disk had failed. Fortunately we'd taken a new Acronis image of the machine on the Saturday, on the assumption that if the motherboard had come adrift from one component, it might easily reject another.But there was something about that "No bootable device" message that was plaguing our subconscious.Eventually we realised what it was. Unlike the usual message you get with a hard-drive failure, this one mentioned Intel.We hit the Google search bar and discovered that, by default, the Intel PRO/1000 software installs a program called the Intel Boot Agent, which changes the host PC's BIOS so that it looks first to find a bootable device over the network, rather than booting first from the hard drive.This is a feature that might be handy in typical enterprise situations, where administrators can use it to boot a diskless workstation or install an operating system on a new computer, but in the home or small business environment it's a potential nightmare.To have it installed by default on a retail product, with no warning whatsoever, is, in our view, unacceptable, if not negligent. Our investigations suggest some people might well have replaced hard disks and/or motherboards unnecessarily as a result of Intel's failure to adjust its installation defaults and warn its customers of the procedure and likely consequences.We were certainly on the verge of replacing our hard drive.Intel should immediately instruct its retailers to warn purchasers and it should include a warning sticker on its packages.Something like "This product could destroy your weekend" might be apt.
© 2009 The Age
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