No MAC Address on SiS190 NIC

A Windows XP Home Service Pack 2 system I purchased from a computer show was not obtaining an IP by DHCP When I plugged it into the LAN. when I checked the IP configuration with ipconfig, I saw that there was no IP information assigned to the device.

C:\Documents and Settings\User>ipconfig /all

Windows IP Configuration

C:\Documents and Settings\User>_

When I checked the network adapter in the Device Manager, I found it listed as a "SiS190 100/10 Ethernet Device" with an exclamation mark in a yellow circle next to it, which indicates there is a problem with the device. When I right-clicked on it and chose Properties, I saw "This device cannot start. (Code 10)".

The system has an A31G v:1.0 motherboard, which is manufactured by PCCHIPS in it with a built-in network controller. I downloaded the latest driver from the motherboard manufacturer's website and installed that driver instead of the one in use. That didn't help nor did downloading a driver from the Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) Corporation website (SiS manufactures the chipset for the network controller) and attempting to use it. The results remained the same. I also tried right-clicking on the adapter in the Device Manager choosing "uninstall" to remove it and then right-clicking again and chosing "scan for hardware changes". That didn't help either.

I booted the system from a Slax Linux Live CD. The system didn't get a dynamically assigned address by DHCP When I checked the network configuration with ifconfig -a, I saw the following:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00
          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:268 (268.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:5 Base address:0xdead

A Network Interface Card (NIC) should not have a hardware, aka Media Access Control address of all zeroes, which may explain why it did not receive an address by DHCP. The DHCP server likely won't assign an IP address to a system with an invalid MAC address.

I assigned it an IP address manually with the ifconfig command.

root@slax:~# ifconfig  eth0 192.168.1.67 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.1.255
root@slax:~# ifconfig -a
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00
          inet addr:192.168.1.67  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::200:ff:fe00:0/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:13 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:916 (916.0 b)  TX bytes:1098 (1.0 KiB)
          Interrupt:5 Base address:0xdead

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:328 (328.0 b)  TX bytes:328 (328.0 b)

sit0      Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-00-00-00-30-30-30-3A-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
          NOARP  MTU:1480  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

I was then able to successfully ping other systems on the LAN. One of those systems was a Windows Small Business Server (SBS) 2003 system and the other a Windows XP Professional system . However, when I pinged the firewall, I got no response, though I did see the MAC address of the firewall in the ARP table when I issued an arp -a command.

I then assigned the board a hardware address of 00:11:22:33:44:55.

root@slax:~# ifconfig eth0 down
root@slax:~# ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:11:22:33:44:55
root@slax:~# ifconfig eth0 up
root@slax:~# ifconfig eth0
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:11:22:33:44:55
          inet addr:192.168.1.67  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::211:22ff:fe33:4455/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:110 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:101 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:10494 (10.2 KiB)  TX bytes:6410 (6.2 KiB)
          Interrupt:5 Base address:0xdead

At first I could not get a response from any system I pinged on the network. Instead, I got "Destination Host Unreachable" messages. I ran tcpdump in another window to see what was happening. I was then able to successfully ping all hosts again, including the firewall, which had not responded when the network adapter had an invalid hardware address of all zeros. When I stopped tcpdump, I could no longer ping systems. Instead, I got the "Destination Host Unreachable" message. Apparently, by putting eth0 in "promiscous" mode with tcpdump, the network adapter could see ICMP reply packets destined for it.

I found the same to be true with nslookup. In nslookup, I set the server to use for name lookups to be a DNS server on the LAN. A lookup failed when I tried looking up cisco.com. But, when I tried it again with tcpdump running, I got the IP address for cisco.com.

root@slax:~# nslookup
> server 192.168.1.27
Default server: 192.168.2.57
Address: 192.168.1.57#53
> cisco.com
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached
> cisco.com
Server:         192.168.1.27
Address:        192.168.1.27#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:   cisco.com
Address: 198.133.219.25

I put nameserver 192.168.1.27 in /etc/resolv.conf to provide a name server for the system to use and used route default gw 192.168.1.1 to set the default gateway router address. I was then able to access resources on the Internet without a problem.

I opened the system and checked the A31G v:1.0 motherboard. There is a sticker on the parallel port connector inside the system that identifies the Ethernet Address (EA), aka Media Access Control (MAC) or hardware address. In this case the address is 00142AD6D701.

I then booted the system from the hard disk with Windows XP Home again. When I checked the network adapter in the Device Manager, I still saw the yellow circle with the exclamation mark in it.

SiS190 Device Manager problem

The following steps can then be taken to assign an IP address.

In the Device Manager, right-click on the adapter and choose Properties.
Click on the Advanced tab.
Click on Network Address. In this case the value was listed as "Not Present".
Click on Value and put in an Ethernet address. In this case the address is 00142AD6D701. You could pick the same or another address for a SiS190 network adapter; the only caveat is that you can't have another network adapter on the same LAN with the same MAC address.
Click on the OK button.

The yellow circle with the exclamation mark in it then went away and the system automatically obtained an address by DHCP, resolving the problem.

This is not the first time I've had a problem with a system with a built-in network controller on the motherboard with a SiS chipset having all zeros for the MAC address.

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Created: Sunday November 4, 2007