I'm experiencing a strange issue with my four identical computers, each using a Delock PCI Express x4 Network Card (Realtek RTL8125B chipset). All of these PCs are running Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC 24H2, and I'm having trouble with the network interfaces. I manually assign IP addresses to each port, but after rebooting, the interfaces randomly reassigned themselves. For example, 'Test 2' might turn into 'Ethernet 5' while 'Test 1' could be correctly assigned one moment, then lost the next. This keeps happening, even though I've tried several drivers, including the manufacturer's, the standard Windows Update drivers, and those directly from the Realtek website. I'm considering switching to a standard Windows 11 Pro installation. Any ideas or troubleshooting steps would be appreciated!
2 Answers
You might want to try booting your system with a Linux live CD. This can help you see if the issue persists outside of Windows, plus you won't need to modify anything permanently. If the interfaces still scramble, you could be looking at a hardware problem with the NIC itself.
Have you checked the device manager for any hidden devices? Sometimes ghost NICs can cause a lot of confusion, especially if old configurations are trying to apply to new virtual interfaces. If you see some ghost entries, you might want to clean those up in the registry too; I've had to do that a few times with my servers to resolve similar issues.
Yeah, I found a bunch of 'ghost' entries! Working on removing them, though have you ever made a script to automate deleting those entries? I can't imagine doing it manually every time!
Thanks for the suggestion! I’ll give that a shot after I finish testing the drivers!