PowerEdge: 14 Generation running Windows Server encounter a blue screen when installing Chipset Drivers with X2APIC enabled in the system BIOS

Affected products:
Dell 14th Generation PowerEdge servers with PCIe adapters (such as NVIDIA GPU) and Windows server 2012R2, 2016 and 2019 operations systems with X2APIC enabled in the system BIOS

Summary:
Dell 14th Generation PowerEdge servers with PCIe add-in cards (such as NVIDIA GPU) may encounter a blue screen when installing a standalone chipset driver or when performing Lifecycle Controller based OS deployment with X2APIC enabled in the system BIOS.

Details:
Dell 14th Generation PowerEdge servers with PCIe add-in cards (such as NVIDIA GPU) may encounter a blue screen when installing a standalone chipset driver or when performing Lifecycle Controller based OS deployment with X2APIC enabled in the system BIOS. The following blue screen types are encountered:

• Windows Server 2012 R2 - IRQL
• Windows Server 2016 - WHEA
• Windows Server 2019 - IRQL

To recover and successfully update the Chipset Driver perform one of the following options:

• Option 1: Temporarily disable X2APIC, install the chipset driver and then re-enable X2APIC
  1. Disable X2APIC in the System BIOS as shown below.
      
  2. Update the PCIe card drivers to the latest Dell/Vendor versions.
  3. Update the Chipset drivers from the Dell support site.
  4. Enable X2APIC.
• Option 2: Extract the chipset drivers and install through the Command Prompt
  1. Right-click the chipset driver installer and select Run As Administrator. Select Extract in the UI as shown below. Create a temp folder named chipset in the desktop to extract the drivers. For Example: "C:\Users\User_Name\Desktop\Driver\"
      
  2. Once extraction successfully completes, the Dell Update Package indicates that success and the extracted directory should contain the following contents:
       Note: Windows Server 2019 Chipset drivers are located in "…\DriverFiles\production\Windows10-x64."
  3. Open a Command Prompt window (Run as administrator) and run PnPUtil command
     • For Servers running Windows Server 2019: pnputil.exe /Add-Driver C:\Users\User_Name\Desktop\Chipset\DriverFiles\production\Windows10-x64
        
     • For Windows Server 2016 Chipset drivers will be located in "…\DriverFiles\production\W2K16-x64" and the command is:
        
     • For WS2012R2 Chipset drivers will be located in "…\DriverFiles\production\W2K12R2-x64" and the command is:
        
     NOTE: It takes a few minutes to load the chipset drivers and receive a success message.
     • Once the chipset drivers are loaded successfully, restart the host machine and boot into the Operating System. Windows Plug and Play Manager will install all the chipset drivers and clear any yellow bangs from Device Manager after login.