Wake on Lan not working on driver higher than 1.0.1.4 for Intel l225-V

[solemgar]

Hello all!

I have a B-550F Asus ROG gaming motherboard with an Intel l225-V. With driver 1.0.1.4 from manufacturer wake on lan works fine. If I upgrade to the manufacturer version 1.0.2.8 WOL stops to work. Exactly same settings on the BIOS, no change. The same happens upgrading to the latest driver available in the intel page for this adapter (https://downloadcenter.intel.com/product/184676/Intel-Ethernet-Controller-I225-V, 26.3).

Has anyone experienced this issue?

[solemgar]

Hi C128, thanks for your thorough reply. I would generally agree with the assessment, but the newest driver from ASUS (1.2.0.8) exhibits the same issue so I am not sure, although agree that BIOS-UEFI can be a factor here. I am running the stable version 2006. Also , more users report that the issue appears also on Z590 boards which are intel based. Not disregarding that this could be an Asus issue. I opened a support request with them in the past but I will try again.

[C128]

I believe you. Intel has had a bunch of issues with the i225-v. I have the B3 stepping of it which the stepping adds yet another variable. I think Intel does have a firmware/BIOS + i225-v stepping + driver complication going on.. but the board/system vendors should probably provide the right driver for their stuff. Why they'd put up an unvalidated driver like 1.2.0.8, I don't know. Sounds par for the course. I've had zero luck with board vendor's support, they're even sarcastic in their responses. They're worthless. You won't get anything out of them. This Intel rep at least is communicating the issue with his team, which is all we're going to get.

So I haven't had my system long enough but will keep testing to see if the issue presents itself. Wake from S5 over ethernet is a required feature for me. And I believe you that there are issues on Intel based platforms (because there were before).

Point was, thank you for doing something about this and bringing it to Intel's attention. These sorts of issues just require time, it's really a waiting game on Intel and board vendors to get it sorted out. Hard to say which will happen first, a perfect driver that works with all board vendor's hardware+software configurations, or, a good vendor sorting out their own firmware/driver issues. Longterm I'd expect Intel to have a driver that works on everything, but the i225v is a mess. I commend Intel for pushing the industry forward with a cheap 2.5Gbit solution, but this is what they earned for it. But, no one else is really doing it, at least not with quality. No good deed goes unpunished.

[solemgar]

Thanks C128! I really appreciate your answer. I know that having driver 1.0.1.4 working is good enough and this is not a big deal. I am lucky enough (fingers crossed) to not have disconnects or any other horror stories I heard from other 225v users, so far it's been reliable. From my experience, even with solid QA, there is always small (or big) bugs that slip away.  I don't mind reporting them since this is the only way to make products better, with customer feedback. I am not expecting an immediate fix or anything! Just reporting a noted issue so it can be fixed at some point eventually.

Said that, I'll try again with Asus and let's see what happens!

[C128]

I've been doing some reading on this issue, and if you haven't tried the latest drivers and setting 'Speed & Duplex' to your network speed rather than autodetect, and 'Wait for Link' to off, you could give it a try. Supposedly there's additional latency due to a potential driver bug without turning Wait for Link off anyway. The good thing about Asus is they'll have a lot more influence with Intel. I'm sure Intel themselves wants to put the i225v debacle behind them after reading about everything that has gone on.

[Mike_Intel]

Hello solemgar,

Thank you for your update. We will still try to further check the issue, however just like the advise of the other forum users, have you also tried raising this concern to the manufacturer of the board?

If you have questions, please let us know. In case we do not hear from you, we will make a follow up after 3 workings days.

Thank you.

Best regards,

Michael L.

Intel® Customer Support Technician

[Mike_Intel]

Hello solemgar,

Thank you so much for the update and we do understand your situation. However, we have an article that contains recommendations that confirmed to be working with other customers, so this could be BIOS related. That is the reason why we suggest to contact Asus again and create a ticket to check what would be their recommendation about the issue.

If you have questions, please let us know. In case we do not hear from you, we will make a follow up after 3 workings days.

Thank you.

Best regards,

Michael L.

Intel® Customer Support Technician

[solemgar]

Understood Michael. I really appreciate your help and professionalism. I'll try again with Asus support. Have a wonderful day!

[Mike_Intel]

Hello solemgar,

Thank you so much for the update and understanding. Since you are now going to speak with Asus regarding this issue, I need to close this inquiry. 

If you need further assistance, please post a new question. 

Thank you and stay safe.

Best regards,

Michael L.

Intel® Customer Support Technician

[C128]

Well, I was wrong on determining it wasn't the driver. I'm seeing the issue now too, on my Z590 system. If Intel's own latest and greatest is doing it, we definitely have a problem. Upon receiving this new information, my view has changed. This is either the driver or the i225v's firmware. Maybe yet-another-hardware-bug for the i225. I crossposted my experience in another customer's ticket here. Will create my own if some sort of news doesn't arrive that this issue has been identified and is being worked on by Intel.

https://community.intel.com/t5/Ethernet-Products/Asus-B550-I-Gaming-WOL-oesn-t-work-after-full-shutdown/td-p/1289646

OP please report back if Asus says anything useful. I'm not holding my breath as I've tried to interact with their support a few times before. When a vendor like AMD or Intel has a problem, Asus consistently deflects the issue and closes the ticket rather than putting their engineering team on it to follow up with Intel etc. Obviously Intel will respond a little better to Asus reaching out than me or you. That said, I still hold faith that these support reps will properly document and get this issue over to Intel engineering.

[solemgar]

Thanks C128. I am still discussing this with Asus, so far they asked me to upgrade to the latest Beta BIOS but considering that different platforms are affected I told them I was not very comfortable upgrading to a beta bios release and requested if it was possible to repro this in their lab.  Thanks a lot for confirming you are hitting the same and i'll definitely come back to update.

[C128]

I'm also going to followup with any resolution here for you. I do want to make sure, you've probably seen this support doc from Intel on wake from S5. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000038313/network-and-io/ethernet-products.html I wanted to make sure you're setting 'NS Offload' to disabled. The value mentioned in the document was either renamed or has another name for other ethernet products, as it lists it as 'Respond to NS requests without waking system'. I haven't tracked all of my changes, but this is the one I'm currently isolating in my testing. But this came to me very randomly and is hard to reproduce. This issue acts exactly as if it's losing it's ARP record or not responding to NS requests.

I agree, running a beta bios sounds like desperation on their part. While there may be updates to the NIC delivered through a UEFI-BIOS update, this is more than likely firmware and/or driver related.

[C128]

Isolating that didn't help. Isolating 'Enable UEFI network stack' (with PXE boot options disabled) to see if that changes anything. My WoL from S5 works with or without it but attempting to see if there's a glitch somewhere.

[solemgar]

Hi C128, I went through Asus suggestion and upgraded to BIOS 2404 Beta. This didn't help. They wanted me to disable fast startup but I don't want to do it since it works just fine with 1.0.1.4 and it will be like a "downgrade". In this reddit post they mention it helps but I have my doubts.

Intel l225-V driver 1.0.2.8 and further breaks wake on lan : ASUS (reddit.com)

[C128]

I've been doing wake from S5 for years, over a decade and on machines with fast startup I've always disabled it in Windows. I've left it enabled in the BIOS, but I don't think it does anything if it's not enabled in the OS. It's worth trying. I don't think it's going to help you if it worked on 1.0.1.4 with your config. You're not the only person getting this. For me, it works for a while and then stops, requiring the power plug fix that I discovered before. But it fails on all driver versions for me in time. Changing the UEFI network stack option either way does nothing for me, WoL works, until it doesn't.

They have an edge case here that may be hard to track down, but it's almost certain they'll test this out again at least on a Z590 board like mine, which is most likely related to the issue everyone is seeing. I'm currently using their latest i225v driver since it makes no difference for me which one I use. No one on Reddit knows anything, those are kids that just want to argue with someone. Those that find their way to this thread, we're helping them with the information that we're putting down. Best off just searching the wider web and hope to find some forum dedicated to networking and ask there if anyone is using an i225v with WoL from S5.

[C128]

Have you tried rolling back to an older BIOS release? I would do that. Your board has BIOS Flashback. If you're running Ryzen 5000 then I'd go all the way back to your 1805 release. If you're on an older chip, I'd go all the way back to the 1202 release. If that fixes it, that tells us a lot. If it does, I'd go up each BIOS release until you find it doesn't work again.

Before that, I'd try disabling fast startup though. Windows or BIOS setting has the same end effect, disabling it. I hate fast startup because it caches things and can cause problems with hardware swaps, and just weirdness in general. I'm not a fan personally.

[solemgar]

Hi C128, sorry for the late reply, was on holidays!  

Regarding the BIOS rollback I would rather not since these boards with Ryzen 5000 (i have a 5800x) have a nasty bug with the USB ports dropping out that has been (so far) corrected. Since I have an stable system now, I am dreading making more changes.

For the fast startup, I would agree with you that the recommendation is to leave it disabled generally for WOL, but since it is working fine with it enabled on 1.0.1.4 would rather leave it on. Still everything points at a driver issue. 

If I gather the energy, might just do a full rollback to the initial bios and try the fast startup disable with 1.0.2.4. 

[C128]

I doubt a UEFI BIOS rollback would help anyway. I tried on mine the other day, because I swear my issue started with a recent BIOS update. But while I do think my i225v's firmware was updated in an update, I don't think the older version was ever present in the old BIOS. So flashing back did nothing. My issue remained. They don't package everything in every BIOS release. It will rollback the core BIOS but not every other 3rd party module firmware update like this.

I had the USB issue with my 5900X. I was going to keep it as a 2nd system but sold it, that system was fine until I dropped in the 5900X.. it also introduced problems with the memory controller / my RAM. If affected by the US issue, it's very frustrating. Consider RMAing the chip as my research into that one showed that can fix it. It was the only real consistent fix that I found from other people. I did so much troubleshooting that I was just done with it and refused to RMA, but I think it's the only permanent fix. The BIOS updates just seem to reduce it.

On the NIC issue, given my results with rolling back, if it's working for you now I'd just use it until we get an update. I did put a ticket in with Asus. Who knows if that will do any good. I feel like support centers get paid more by dismissing the most support tickets as not an issue or not their problem. There's definitely a problem here.

For me, no driver versions resolve the issue. I tried the ones listed by Asus. So I'm just running Intel's official latest (26.3). All have the same behavior, I think it's a firmware + driver issue. One or the other could fix it. WoL works from S5, until it doesn't, and then I have to pull the power plug for 30 seconds. There's no way Intel and Asus can't duplicate this in a lab. They should both be trying.

This issue is extremely annoying for me as I've been flipping on my PC from the Asus Router app constantly, and also from my Steam Link hardware devices for years. I know how to configure it, I know how it works, this is definitely a real issue. Without WoL from S5 I wouldn't even bother having this desktop PC at all. I'll just get rid of it and move to a laptop so I hope they get to work on it.

[C128]

Checking in on this as I've continued to troubleshoot this issue for myself. I wanted to verify if you could set your WoL settings to what I use, these are my settings on the latest i225-v driver (1.0.2.8) for my board from Asus.To keep this crystal clear, I simply have a screenshot of every single setting. Many guides like Intel's own are not exactly clear- https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000038313/ethernet-products.html. Their steps on Hiberboot and Fast Startup should be followed though, I have always done those two changes. Fast Startup can cause problems with hardware and drivers as it caches the Windows kernel. It's really not worth it, and I hate the feature as it has caused me troubleshooting headaches in the past with GPUs.

I haven't tried them on Intel's latest yet, as I believe there are differences in the options you can set which may affect functionality. All settings here- https://imgur.com/a/ySboRTi

Let me know if you try these settings, and if they change anything for you.

[solemgar]

Hello C128,

Apologies for the late reply. I upgraded to driver version (from Asus) 1.0.2.14 and disabled fast boot and WOL works again. No idea why it works with fast startup enabled in 1.0.1.4 but I decided to keep the latest version installed and fast startup disabled.

[C128]

Glad to hear it. Mine works with those settings (I will update them as I also disabled ARP offloading for good measure) but it stops responding after a few days. I then have to do the power plug fix and it goes for some days again. I may try replacing my ethernet cable, as a break in power or network connectivity can prevent WoL from working correctly. 

I do think it's a bit too much of a coincidence that with these driver updates and motherboard firmware updates.. and others reporting problems here. But ultimately I place a lot of blame at the feet of the i225v, which has been plagued with problems for a long time now. And I've been using WoL from S5 for 15 years now, no issues that weren't caused by me (driver settings etc). Using both Intel and Realtek adapters.

I did create a ticket with Asus, they were worthless. Said to buy a new adapter (?), or, send in my motherboard. They are not going to setup WoL and test for a week or two as in my situation. They'll test it once, say it works, and that's that. These sorts of issues are hard to pin down.

I'm really out of options on my side, but it does seem that older drivers are more reliable on this (could be just coincidence). And I'll likely replace my ethernet cable. Not much else I can do.

Good call on giving up on fast startup. That feature sucks. Speeds up your boot times by a whole second or two, and does it by caching the Windows kernel. Not worth it. Created nothing but issues for me with troubleshooting over the years. I prefer to know I'm getting a clean boot every single time I start up the machine.

[tap77]

Hi,

I own a rog z590-f board and i'm experiencing the same problems with WOL as you are, but i haven't found a solution to this yet. I have tested what intel mentioned in this thread with different drivers but with no success. The problem is as mentioned, WOL works for about 3 days until it doesn't (i did not change any settings meanwhile), where the temporary solution is to cut the power to the pc for 30 seconds and then it starts working again (temporary).

I have been in contact with asus, but they wont help because they cant find anything wrong with my settings and therefore "the problem has to be with something else out of their support area". Right now im using latest driver from intel 1.0.1.3 with fastboot disabled in windows, and in BIOS.

Have you been able to find a solution to this?

Best regards.