How-To: Update your HP MediaSmart Server NIC drivers

By on October 5, 2008 in How to Guides, Windows Home Server, Windows Home Server v1

A lot of people have experienced slow transfer speeds to and from their HP MediaSmart Server, and some have had problems with it dropping connections all the time.  One brave  user has found a solution to this problem and has shared it with us. Blackprint has walked through the steps, written a tutorial and included pictures on how to update your NIC driver (aka ethernet driver).

Before starting, I want to warn you that not only is this very likely not supported by HP, but can result in losing network access to your server all together.  Now to turn it over to Blackprint:

You might be thinking “Why would I need to do this?” well I can tell you, from my experience, it solved the problem of my slow network speeds. I was getting around 200KBps and now have a steady 9MBps over wireless-n. Be warned: it can be risky because if it goes wrong and the ethernet port stops working, you will have no access to your box, so only update at your own risk.

What you will need

  • Remote Desktop Connection
  • The Driver

What to Do

Firstly, we need to check what driver version you currently have. Remote Desktop into your Home Server, right-click on my computer and click on manage. Go to Device Manager, expand Network adapters, right click on the SiS191 and go to properties.

Click on the driver tab. The latest version (at time of writing) was released 03/03/08.

If your driver is before this version and you are experiencing slow network speeds, it’s time to update.

Extract the zipped driver file, somewhere in the Shared Folders is fine. Open the Setup.exe in the sgl206a folder.

Follow the installation through, if you see this message click Continue Anyway.

The driver will install and if done correctly it will ask to restart the server. I recommend restarting ASAP. If the server seems unresponsive for a couple of seconds during the install, it was normal in my case. I must have reinstalled this driver a few times during the writing of this tutorial and have had no problems.

Done

You can check the new driver version by following the initial instructions above. Remote Desktop into your Home Server, right-click on my computer and click on manage. Go to Device Manager, expand Network adapters, right click on the SiS191 and go to properties. Click on the driver tab.

Additional Info

The driver link may become out of date. You can get the latest driver from the SiS download page. Read and accept the agreement. Select Windows Server 2003, Network Driver, SiS191 and click Go. Choose a location to download from, I recommend choosing as close to your home as possible to get the best speed. You can then follow the instructions above.



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  • Espen

    Works very well. No troubles at all. Thanks

  • soaklord

    Glad to see you got this up. Nice tutorial!

  • The Office Maven

    Not to take anything away from this great write up, but this information was already publicized way back in March by a guy named Rafael (and so credit should go to him). See here:

    http://www.withinwindows.com/2008/03/30/newer-drivers-are-better-go-figure/

  • Pingback: Update NIC Drivers on the HP MediaSmart « MS Windows Home Server

  • The Office Maven

    Hi blackprint,

    No worries. I wasn’t getting on you or anyone else… I just remember this topic being discussed a while ago by Rafael and thought that credit should be given where do.

    I appreciate your excellent write-up and certainly didn’t intend to step on yours or anyone else’s feet with my comment.

    Thanks!

    – MIKE

  • The Office Maven

    Oops! That should have been “due” not “do”.

  • https://technocore.homeserver.com/ Drashna

    I do vaguely remember rafael’s post, but there wasn’t much info on the page, nor where there any more than 1 picture. I’ll add credit to him, but blackprint did a great job of writing this up for WGS (and grabbing some nice screenshots!)

  • Jeff

    I can’t execute anything from the remote desktop on my HP MediaSmart server. I get an error message saying I may not have the appropriate permission, even though I’m logged in as the Administrator. I even copied the unzipped foler to the desktop and tried running it there, same issue. Seems to be any executable I try to launch by double-clicking on it.

  • Served

    The same thing is happening that occurred I think when I went to install something earlier (wish I could remember). I try to execute setup.exe and get the “Windows cannot access the specified device, path or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item.”

    What gives? I think when this occurred earlier, I had to copy the executable to the desktop then execute it. I tried that for the NIC driver update. Same thing happens.

    Can someone PLEASE explain WHY this happens and HOW to fix it – for this application and future ones? Logged in through Remote Desktop as Administrator (is ther any othe way?).

    HUGELY appreciated!

    – Served

  • The Office Maven

    The “Internet Explorer Enhanced Security” feature of your WHS is probably blocking the execution of EXE program files on your server. Checkout “NOTE #4″ in the following FAQ for steps on how to turn it off:

    http://www.theofficemaven.com/WHSOutlook/faq/#Q01

  • Served

    Thank you.

  • blackprint

    I didn’t want to take any credit from anyone or claim any credit for finding this solution, nor did I state that this was a solution that I actually found. This is just a tutorial to show you “how to”, which Drashna wanted. Knowing I owned a HP MSS, he asked if I could do a quick write up. Presumably he asked me from a post in the forums where I was encountering slow network speeds and managed to rectify it with these drivers. Other people had since asked for a tutorial, so here it is.

    http://forum.wegotserved.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=2350&hl=slow+network+speed

  • DocJames

    Which of the following drivers should I use?:

    SiS191/190 Glan logo driver package
    or
    SiS191 Gigabit LAN & SiS190 LAN Driver

    They both show up when I choose “SiS191″ on the download page …

    Thanks

  • Andy

    @DocJames -
    I used the top ones (sgl207.zip, the driver version looks to be the same, 03/03/2008) and all works fine.. :-)

  • blackprint

    Looks like the top one was released after I wrote this tutorial and hasn’t been tested by myself but Andy (above) says it works fine.

    @ MIKE – No worries mate. I don’t take any credit for discovering this solution, just providing my own tutorial to help people out.

  • drwebster93

    Has anyone tried the “update driver” button on the driver properties page?

  • Chris

    I have updated successfully using “SiS191/190 Glan logo driver package”. Thanks for the post. It was ~6MBps in Wireless-N and ~40MBps in Gigabit wired network. Now, it is over 8MBps in Wireless-N but is the same for the Gigabit wired network.

    BTW, I installed through remote desktop and it logged me out at the end of installation. Then, I logged back in and saw the dialog box waiting for me clicking to restart the server.

  • Shangwe

    I updated the driver, but now my wireless connection fails several times a day. I want to go back to the original driver (I have an older netgear router) and see if that makes a difference.

    What’s the best way to go about doing this?

    Thanks.

  • https://technocore.homeserver.com/ Drashna

    @Shangwe, on the network adapter properties, the “Rollback driver” button will revert back to the previous version.

  • Shangwe

    @Drashna -
    @ Drashna:

    Thanks, I rolled it back, and all went well. Everything back to normal.

  • jlsoaz

    I appear to have succeeded in using this article to help me update. Thank you for writing out the article. I was referred from this discussion:

    http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2203&sid=8e6762d1f7b8cab4fa0317ea08dcbd9d&p=34640#p34640

    A few quick points by way of feedback:

    - All of the article .jpg links appear to be broken. I suggest they be fixed or removed.

    - The link to the driver is also broken.

    - I got the driver from the link that was given at the end:
    http://www.sis.com/download/

    - I think the latest driver is sgl207. However, this is not immediately clear as the sis.com page has 2 drivers?

    - I was not able to extract and run setup.exe from the shared folders page. I was able to install only by extracting to a folder on the WHS. From there, using remote desktop, I ran setup.exe

    - If there is a way to do all of this without remote desktop, I was unable to find it. I mention this because of the insistence of the advisors on the microsoft forums that it is not necessary to use remote desktop.

    - This process seemed quite dangerous, but I want to get Wake-On-LAN to work, and I am told I need to update this driver.

    - It seems to me a bit bizarre that HP or MS wouldn’t find a way to allow us to update such a basic driver in our systems.

    Anyway, thank you for this set of steps.

    jl

  • http://www.JeckylProductions.com JeckylPhoto

    Thank you so much for posting this, I've been having so many difficulties with network speed on my HP EX470. After numerous attempts and removal of several add-ins and calls to HP technical support I was sure that my problem was due to a network issue. I do not understand HP refusal to have this be part of a download, after installing the driver it resulted in a tremendous improvement, now I can navigate and use remote access with ease. Thanks again.

  • Bill

    Seemed to go without a problem. However when I check the driver version it has the new date 3/3/2008 but the version say 2.1 while the download said 2.7. Also I've noticed an improvement in speed. It is really snappy now. Feel like a local disk.!