Intel has announced a driver update for 700 series motherboards that have a 1226 Ethernet controller and have been reported to randomly disconnect Ethernet connections. This is expected to provide a temporary fix for Raptor Lake motherboards while Intel continues to address the issue.

In January, we reported that a design flaw in the Intel 1226-V 2.5Gbe controller (opens in new tab) could cause Ethernet connections to be lost for several seconds. At the time, the only workaround was to switch to wi-fi or install a spare PCIe network card.

Last month, Intel posted on its community forum (opens in new tab) that it was "working diligently to reproduce this issue and to address the root cause and fix," but this post did not address the sometimes problematic I226-V itself, the successor to the I225 Ethernet 2.5 GbE controller It did not address many of the issues.

If you are experiencing disconnection problems with 700 series chipsets with the 1226 Ethernet controller, Intel suggests that you do the following:

"For customers experiencing this issue, we suggest that you set the Windows/Linux driver advanced settings to " Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE)" mode in the advanced settings of the Windows/Linux driver to alleviate the problem.

New driver updates disable EEE by default. However, Intel is still working on finding a more permanent solution, which can be tricky if it is a problem with the chip itself that cannot be fixed on the software side; according to Benchlife (opens in new tab), MSI is also working on a more permanent solution for Intel's latest networking chips. According to Benchlife (opens in new tab), MSI has also released a driver update for motherboards with Intel's latest networking chips, and other OEMs are likely to follow suit soon.

Meanwhile, if you own a motherboard with the newer 700 series chipsets, you can access the Windows Event Viewer, look under "Windows Log," then "System," and search for "e2fnexpress" to see when the network link was disconnected. You can check to see if these random drops are occurring.