Hi all,

If anyone has any suggestions about this I would be grateful.

I have a compaq proliant ml570 with 8GB RAM, 4xPIII 700Mhz, HDD Smart Array and 4x100Mbps Fast Ethernet NIC's.

I have run the smart start 5.5 software to configure the smart array for the server which is configured fine using raid5. I use the configuration software to launch the OS (namely VMWare ESX 3) onto the server. The software installs fine except I have no NIC activity.

I only have one light on each of the NIC's. I have set the IP address statically and dynamically but the result is the same. I have changed switches and the patch cables but the same result.

I then tried loading W2K3 instead of VMWare but I got the same result. I noticed that Windows does see the 4 devices but can not ping out and you can not ping in. No firewalls are enabled.

Has anyone got any ideas what I could try?....

Little bit of a late reply on this one, but it almost sounds like you have bad network hardware. Regardless of the OS, many network cards will successfully make a connection (connection and activity light will light up) when connected to a device. Is this happening?