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Dell Studio XPS 8100 - Wrong MAC address
Dear Dell support community,
the onboard network card on my Dell Studio XPS 8100 Desktop is constantly showing the MAC address 00:10:18:00:00:00.
According to BACS (Broadcom Advanced Control Suite) all tests pass except the EEPROM test.
According to the Broadcom DOS Diagnostic Utilities found on http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethernet_nic/netlink_k57.php, all tests pass except the EEPROM and this utility also shows that the MAC address is invalid as well as unknown.
The network card itself works without problems.
As I believe this might be an issue with every Studio XPS 8100 Desktop, I am kindly asking everyone with such a computer to open up a command prompt and type getmac to see if it shows the same address. If it does show the same address, please post in this thread. It only takes about a minute.
I really hope someone can help with this, as I have tried to do so for about a week.
Thanks in advance.
speedstep
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July 28th, 2014 10:00
This seems to be a Broadcomm Issue.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2641278?start=30&tstart=0
Some Windows and Apple computers use a Broadcom network interface card (NIC) that will sometimes report a 00:10:18:00:00:00 MAC address.
This is a "self-assigned" MAC address that indicates an issue has occurred between the NIC and the Operating System.
Vendors have not provided any clear indication as to the cause or the fix.
Recommendation is to disconnect from the network, and do a hard restart of the device before reconnecting to the network. If this does not resolve the issue, then there may be a hardware issue in need of repair.
tkvp9wbmij
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July 29th, 2014 07:00
Hello,
thanks for your answer. How exactly is a NIC hard restart done?
Simply shutting it off and on via network manager isn't resolving anything.
speedstep
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July 29th, 2014 20:00
In the properties of the nic see if you cannot add a manual address to the nic properties.
I usually choose 02:60:8C:XX:XX:XX where XX is random numbers from 00 to FF
tkvp9wbmij
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August 1st, 2014 11:00
Thanks again SpeedStep.
However your last response had nothing to do with my question on how to do a NIC hard reset.
I already tried changing the MAC address with the TMAC mac address changer program and it works.
But this does not help, as I don't know the original branded Broadcom address, which must be somewhere in the EEPROM or else. I also downgraded and upgraded the BIOS of this computer from A02-A05 and the other way around. In addition to that, I followed the guide on http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheNuclearOptionResettingTheCrapOutOfYourNetworkAdaptersInVista.aspx to completely reset the network adapter.
Nothing of all that worked, so I guess this seems to be a hardware problem I cannot solve.
I am really at loss here. I am also kindly asking everyone with a Dell Studio XPS 8100 to quickly type in
getmacinto a command prompt and post in this thread if it results in the same MAC address 00:10:18:00:00:00Hope this gets resolved. Thanks in advance.
tkvp9wbmij
5 Posts
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August 7th, 2014 11:00
Bump
tkvp9wbmij
5 Posts
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August 12th, 2014 10:00
As this problem could not be solved here, I am asking the administrators to remove my account.
Thanks to SpeedStep and everyone else taking the time to read this thread!